FLORIAN - The Most Traveled Man on Earth

Letter 12.
New Orleans, January 23, 1809
[From Jean-Baptiste Florian to his wife and four daughters, still in England]
Here I am arrived at the end of my voyage, my dear and tender friends, after a rather long
road. On the rivers, we were extremely set back by bad weather and storms which many
times forced our boat to remain anchored beside the banks. Despite these
inconveniences, I invite you all to take the same route if you come by New York or
Philadelphia. I won’t talk any more about the details of my voyage on the Mississippi.
As a matter of fact, they would not be at all interesting. I wrote to Mr. [Mrs.?] Cheriot a
letter which I asked to transmit to you, 16 and there is nothing for me to add relative to the
navigation of the river.
I will get to my reception here in the city and the outskirts right away. I disembarked on
the levee yesterday afternoon about two o’clock. Last Friday I enquired about the
dwelling of Emmanuel [Emmanuel Marie de Segrais, brother of the wife of Jean-
Baptiste] and within a little while found myself embraced in his arms. Our joy was
mutual and with those [same] sentiments he expressed the desire to have here his beloved
sister and the rest of his family, and this expression added to my joy to see him [?]. I had
expected him to be larger and slenderer, according to the report from Joseph [Joseph
Marie de Segrais, another brother-in-law], and through such erroneous thinking I almost
did not recognize him, except for his striking resemblance to our dear Marguerite
(because you should no longer call her Gogo; I will tell you why further on), and with
your uncle Beaugeard. 17 He is only an inch or two taller than me, and he is strongly and
vigorously built.
That very day he talked to me about his business at Natchitoches (and not at Ouashita, as
I had thought). He told me that the business was doing very well, and that the man whom
he had put in charge had many talents, but a disposition so devilish that he had become
disagreeable equally to the inhabitants and to the _______. I proposed to him that if the
man resigned, as he has all the appearance of doing, to put me in his place, and which we
both hope will take place soon. I say “we hope,” although for me this hope involves
everything I hate most in the world – the life of bookkeeping, shop and commerce. I
would have liked, a million times more, to go with 2 or 3 Negroes into the depth of the
forest, or on the least inhabited bayou, to build a cabin and clear a few acres of ground. I
am so perfectly convinced, as I remarked in my letter from Natchez, that of all the
speculations it is the most sure and the most profitable. But in the situation in which I
find myself, I don’t have the choice to make. All Emmanuel’s means are tied up in
16
<strong>The</strong> letter mentioned here may well be the letter written from Natchez on 4 January 1809, which is
transcribed above.
17
Marguerite is the wife of Jean-Baptiste Florian. “Uncle Beaugeard” is almost certainly Nicolas-Joseph
Beaugeard, born in 1755, died in 1818. It is this uncle who was secretary to Queen Marie Antoinette, ship
owner, and the person who saved the life of the King, as related elsewhere in these letters.
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