An important rediscovery: a delightfully carefree Louis de Freycinet regales his family with news of his and Rose's reception at the Ile de France in 1818 during a critical moment of the Uranie voyage. Freycinet's original letter, now lost, was here transcribed by his mother at the family estate in the Drôme, to be forwarded to her eldest son (and Baudin voyage veteran) Henri.

An important rediscovery: a delightfully carefree Louis de Freycinet regales his family with news of his and Rose's reception at the Ile de France in 1818 during a critical moment of the Uranie voyage. Freycinet's original letter, now lost, was here transcribed by his mother at the family estate in the Drôme, to be forwarded to her eldest son (and Baudin voyage veteran) Henri.

The present letter makes an important addition to a now reasonably well-known conduit of family information. The Freycinet matriarch, Elisabeth, would receive letters from Louis and Rose and would send comments and – if important enough – these long excerpts to Henri in Rochefort.

Full of detailed and personal comments, this is therefore an important addition to our picture of the private life and ambitions of Freycinet, who preferred, in later life, to preserve the personal writings of his wife Rose rather than his own. His mother's lengthy transcription, some 800 words, thus faithfully records what is now only the third known private voyage letter by Freycinet of any real substance.

Louis's original letter had been dated Ile de France, 12 May 1818. The Uranie voyage spent some two months at the island, where Rose in particular was fêted by the locals. The first part of the letter gives a good account of his meeting with his brother Charles who, as Louis writes, was luckily still in Port Louis but was about to depart for Calcutta to work for a large trading house. Mindful of his mother's feelings, he writes that he had little doubt but the position will throw his brother onto "le chemin de la fortune," even if, he continues in a more sombre mood, it means that Charles cannot yet clear his current debts. It would be the last time he saw his brother, who died in India five years later.

The second half of the letter is Louis' superb account of their kind reception in Port Louis, and particularly the services of George Smith, chief judge of Mauritius, to whom Charles had been private secretary. As Louis writes, Smith made such entreaties to them that it was impossible to refuse the offer of lodging with him. Nor was this merely a formal politeness, as all of the luxuries of his house – dining, horses, carriages, palanquins, and so on – are at their command. More, not only do Rose and Louis lodge with Smith, but the observatory is now set up in the grounds, and the officers and men who take the observations have taken over a room in the house. Smith has also ensured that their evenings are passed in pleasant soirées and has planned a grand ball, which will give Rose the opportunity to see the high society and the other ladies in their finery ("un bal considérable doit mettre Rose en état de juger des agréments des plus jolies personnes de son espèce` qui soient dans la ville, telle est du moins l'expression propre de Mr. Smith").

Nor have they, Louis concludes, lost sight of their mission, and in only a few days they will depart on their vessel. In a postscript he even notes that they have already sent three large cases full of natural history specimens from the "three kingdoms" to France. He signs off with jaunty best wishes and the note that his wife is completely occupied at the moment in writing the family a long letter which she will send before they leave, which will tell them thousands and thousands of thing about the voyage ("Ma femme trop occupé dans ce moment vous écrira avant son départ de la colonie elle vous dit mille et mille choses").

With a scribe as conscientious as Louis, it is something of a surprise to realise how few private letters by him survive from the entire Uranie voyage. Apart from the present example, the only known equivalents are a letter Freycinet wrote to the Sydney judge Barron Field (a small masterpiece), and another he wrote to his brother Henri from Mauritius and Réunion in July 1818. Additionally, there are a few very brief postscripts he added to letters by Rose: these, in turn, known from transcriptions by Elisabeth de Freycinet, just as here. All of these known letters are now in the SLNSW, most via roundabout routes (the Field letter, for example, was for many years in the collection of the eccentric Parisian collector Henri Ledoux).