[LA BARTHE, Abbé de].

A rich and fascinating late eighteenth-century French manuscript containing lectures on physics delivered in 1762 at the Academy of Sciences in Paris by Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700-1770), apparently belonging to a characterful French Enlightenment intellectual, with further extensive notes on physics, including diagrams and tables, as well as medicinal receipts and accounts. Part of the manuscript refers to the management of the Ferme de Monziols or Marvejols in Lozère, southern France, owned by the la Barthe family (the name appears on p. 200 in this manuscript as the name given to some land undergoing ‘ameliorations’); construction of the property was begun in 1702 and completed in 1725. The Abbé la Barthe (1721-1801), who inherited in 1759, studied in Auvergne and Paris – presumably mathematics and physics – before serving as an artillery officer in the War of the Austrian Succession; on the pastedown he records buying a book in 1767 ‘chez Jombert libraire’, i.e. the Parisian bookseller Charles-Antoine Jombert (1712-84), who specialised in books on military science and artillery. In Paris, La Barthe associated with intellectuals including Charles Marie de la Condamine (1701-74), French explorer, mathematician and contributor to Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Though the book is not signed anywhere by la Barthe, the dates fit perfectly, as does the scientific and experimental nature of the manuscript’s contents, revealing a fascination with scientific methodology and instruments, as well as its content referring to intellectual Parisian life and the running of Monziols. The book itself was evidently made and sold by a stationer in Montpellier.

The dates of the manuscript accord closely with La Barthe’s inheritance of Monziols in 1759, since the earliest record in his hand is from 1758, detailing the 9-month process of teaching a canary to sing a fanfare. If not in Paris already, la Barthe was certainly in the city by 1762, since in this year he recorded Nollet’s lectures, apparently using a different, more careful hand: ‘Extrait des leçons de physique experimentale faittes par M. l’Abbé Nolet [sic] de l’Academie des Sciences 1762.’ Jean-Antoine Nollet is known for being the first to observe osmosis and for his outlandish experiments with electricity, which included electrocuting a boy hanging from the ceiling by silk cords, and simultaneously electrocuting two hundred monks to prove conductivity. He was the leading populariser of science in C18th France and aimed to increase public scientific knowledge through his lectures. The notes here include a description and diagram of Nollet’s anemometer for measuring wind and cover the properties of water as ice, vapour and seawater, fire (described as a ‘fluid’ element), use of the Marmite de Papin, i.e. pressure cooker, etc.

Possibly by 1769 La Barthe was back at Monziols, since a note refers to building works undertaken in that year. The extensive notes on physics and mechanics, as well as receipts for medical and gastronomic recipes, are indicators of La Barthe’s interest in running his estate; an index describes the contents. There are several pages of notes ‘from experience’ on fixing pendulums in clocks, La Barthe complaining that the distance to Paris poses a challenge for small-town amateur horologists. Extensive notes on thermometers, partially derived from the Scottish physician George Martine’s work, published 1766, include historically aberrant temperatures recorded in European cities and the ideal temperatures for growing exotic plants including pineapples; La Barthe also records changes to the mercury in his de Luc barometer in accordance with weather events in 1797. He notes a ‘secret’ for cleaning telescopes. There are notes, with calculations, referring to Mathurin Jacques Brisson’s experiments at the Academy of Sciences on the ‘specific weight’ (pesanteur) of bodies such as gold and silver in water, vinegar, etc. He records the prices of art materials including pencils, pigments and papers and notes recipes for inks, including a ‘perpetual ink.’ The medicinal receipts include remedies for children and horses and an elixir for long life; there are extensive lists of prices of medicinal drugs, pills, syrups, etc., some for a specific druggist, M. Grand of Montpellier. Gastronomic receipts include hams, cakes, patés, lemonade, honey and gooseberry jelly, etc.

Perhaps most interesting are the hand-coloured illustrations, possibly La Barthe’s own invention, depicting ‘mechanical or philosophical’ stoves capable of heating two rooms using the same amount of wood usually required to heat one, with depictions of the outside brick structures and the internal airflow (pp. 255-258). The large full-page diagram is a design for a particular folding box. After La Barthe’s death the manuscript continued to be used in the running of the estate; there are several pp. of early nineteenth-century notes in a different hand, record matters relating to livestock farming and to the prices of grain, etc., many going back to the early C17th, copied from other accounts.