A letter written by philosopher René Descartes, and stolen from France 170 years ago, will be placed in a secure, climate-controlled storage vault until it can be hand-carried back to France. Until this week, no one knew that the letter was in the possession of Haverford University. Fortunately, Haverford has been treating the letter with special care--storing it in an acid-free folder, in an acid-free document box. Like all of the documents in Haverford's special collections department, the letter is stored in a secure, climate-controlled space. But since learning that the document was stolen, Haverford is treating it with special care, allowing visitors to view, but not touch, it upon request.
Historical documents can easily be damaged by exposure to light or to the acid in skin or in wood products, such as paper. Because of Haverford's careful storage practices, the letter, which is 369 years old, is still in good condition. John Anderies, the Head of Special Collections at Haverford, told student reporter Carrie Kolar, of the Bi-College News, in an email that "the document is still in very stable condition despite its age." He said that although casual visitors would not be allowed to touch the letter, a scholar or researcher could still "be allowed to hold it to carefully turn its pages."
Italian mathematician Guglielmo Libri stole Descartes' letter, and other documents, from the Institut de France. Libri worked for the French public libraries in the 1840s, serving as secretary for the Committee for the General Catalog of Manuscripts. He stole approximately 30,000 books and manuscripts, and then, on the verge of being arrested, fled to London in 1848, where he told British authorities that he was being pursued by the French police for political reasons. French courts convicted Libri in absentia in 1850. Libri was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Meanwhile, he lived in London, raising money by selling pieces from his collection. At two auctions in 1871, he put 7,628 lots up for sale. It is thought that in one of those auctions, he sold the letter from Descartes.
Eventually, the Descartes letter wound up in the possession of American document collector Charles Roberts. Roberts, who had no idea the letter was stolen, bequeathed it to his alma mater, Haverford University, in his will. Haverford received it when Roberts died in 1901. Since then, the letter has languished in obscurity.
"We certainly knew we had a letter by Descartes," commented the head of special collections at Haverford, John F. Anderies, in the Feb. 25 Chronicle of Higher Education. "What we did not know was that it was an unknown letter....We did not know that it was a stolen letter."
A scholar from the Netherlands, Dr. Erik-Jan Bos, realized the letter was at Haverford when the university began digitizing its special collections and updated its online database. Bos found the letter in a Google search and contacted Anderies. To confirm that the letter was the document Bos believed it was, Anderies scanned it into a pdf file, which he sent to Bos. "Seeing Descartes' handwriting appear on my screen took my breath away," Bos told New York Times reporter Patricia Cohen in an email.
Scholars knew that Descartes had written the four-page letter, which was addressed to his friend, Father Marin Mersenne, in 1641. But they did not know what the letter said. The letter concerns Descartes' book Meditations on First Philosophy, which was about to be published. Bos says the letter shows that Descartes made dramatic changes to Meditations on First Philosophy fairly late in the printing process.
When Haverford's president, Stephen Emerson, learned that the letter had been stolen, he immediately contacted the Institut de France and offered to return it. He told the British Guardian, "While we've certainly benefitted from having the Descartes letter in our collection...there was really only one possible course of action: do the right thing, and offer to return the letter. We certainly hope someone else would do the same for us if the shoe were on the other foot." Emerson will hand-carry the letter back to France personally this coming June.