The Letters of Dominique Chaix, Botanist-Cure

Front Matter....Pages i-4
The Setting....Pages 5-11
Letters one to ten are addressed to Monsieur Dominique Villars, student of surgery at the Hospital of the Father of Charity in Grenoble.[1772–1774]....Pages 12-27
Letters eleven to twenty-nine were addressed to Monsieur Villars, Surgeon, residing at his home in Le Noyer, but botanizing frequently as authorized, as he prepared for the publication of the prospectus of his flora. He would soon discover that the continuing patronage of the intendant, the renewal of his pension had been opposed by the religious order where he had interned in Grenoble, and that success breeds jealousies. During the summer of 1774, he made a trip into Lower Dauphiné, Provence, and Languedoc with Dr. Clappier. At Montélimar, they examined the herbaria of Dr. Pierre Garidel and the Chicoyneau family, then possessed by Dr. Jean-Joseph Menuret de Chambaud. They examined the rich collections (both herbaria and library) of Jean-François Séguier at Nîmes. At Montpellier they saw the collections of Antoine Gouan and Pierre Cusson. They were able to botanize around Avignon, Aix, Marseille, Toulon, and Hyères. The long trip accounts for the substantial hiatus in Chaix’s correspondence that summer.[1774–1779]....Pages 28-57
Letters thirty-one to forty-eight were addressed to Monsieur Villars, Docteur en Médecine in Le Noyer, but sometimes in nearby St.-Bonnet. They cover the months after the publication of his prospectus in April of 1779 until his departure in late 1781 to assume a new post in Grenoble. In 1780, his stipend was doubled to 1000 livres by the intendant, no doubt in compensation for a new course in botany that villars would inaugurate in March of 1780. That he left his wife and children in Le Noyer at the end of 1781, returning for visits on holidays, may mean that he did not anticipate a lengthy tenure in Grenoble.[1779–1781]....Pages 58-87
Letters forty-nine to eighty-eight cover four years: beginning in late 1781 with Villars’ move from Le Noyer to Grenoble to accept appointment as Medécin titulaire de l’hôpital militaire breveté du Roi, ending in late 1785 when the initial volume of Histoire des plantes du Dauphiné ; was in press. The new position brought Villars an additional 800 livres a year, as he was privileged to retain the pension of 1000 livres granted by the intendant. This recognized both his continuing work in botany and his need to pay for a second domicile in Grenoble. Even though Villars continued to give his annual series of botanical lectures, which would seem to have been a justification for additional remuneration, his relative wealth seems to have sparked jealousy within the small medical staff To make matters more uncomfortable for him, he found a disagreeable rivalry between the physicians and surgeons of the city and the Brothers of Charity who administered the hospital for the crown, led by Father Dominique Durand, a surgeon. 278 One can only surmise that, under such circumstances, the continuing peaceful and congenial association with Father Chaix provided Villars with more than a valued botanical collaboration. [1781–1785]....Pages 88-160
Letters 89 to 125 cover nearly three years: beginning in December of 1785, when Chaix received separate copies of his catalogue; and ending in late 1788, by which time the first part of Villars’ third and final volume had been published. The second part of the third volume would be delayed until the autumn of 1789. By then, the beginning of the French Revolution had intervened to complicate the lives of our two botanists most drastically. [1785–1788]....Pages 161-218
Letters 126 to 170 cover the final decade of Chaix’s life. While he remained concerned to correct errors in the three published volumes of the flora, his initial letter in this period, 13 October 1788, provides evidence that he was aware of, and reading about,the constitutional crisis. After the pending storm broke in 1789, both Chaix and Villars would have to cope with the course of political change and dislocation, as they both held titles, curé and médecin du roi, that eventually drew the attention of enemies of the old régime. The reader will find documents illustrative of Chaix’s response, and ultimate plight, intruded among his letters to Villars where appropriate. [1788-1799]....Pages 219-280
Postscript....Pages 281-286
Back Matter....Pages 287-304