The recent moves to ban bullfighting in France and Catalonia brought to mind a letter written by Henry Brockholst Livingston (Sarah Livingston Jay’s brother) to his father William Livingston, on 12 July 1780. Brockholst (as he was known) was in Spain with John Jay, acting as his brother-in-law’s secretary during the Spanish mission (1779-1782). When I looked up the letter on EJay, I found that we didn’t have a copy of it, only an abstract. The repository is listed as the Archivo Historico Nacional, not as unlikely as one would think, if Brockholst’s letter had been intercepted by the Spanish. A search in our document card files gave a reference to a printed excerpt of the letter, but no indication of where the letter might currently be. I found the printed excerpt in the volume 3 of the 1879 edition of the Magazine of American History, fortunately digitized by Google, but more readily accessible on www.archive.org. The excerpt was indeed a description of a bullfight and the two Americans’ disgust with the spectacle. Interestingly, the editors of the MAH credit Brockholst as “John Brockholst Livingston”– a warning to readers to be wary of attributions.

This seemed like an ideal letter to be published in the future Jay “family volume.” Obviously, we could not publish an excerpt from a nineteenth century journal; the original document must be found. Before I tried the AHN, I decided to contact known Livingston collections. I knew that the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library all had important Livingston family holdings, so I emailed each institution with my query. All three answered quickly. The letter was owned by the New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division. Archivist Lee Spilberg very kindly sent me images of the letter. It is a good one. Not only did Brockholst describe the bullfight in detail, but the whole complex and frustrating negotiations with Spain as well. There is far more to this letter than a colorful account of an exotic cultural practice.