Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2)

From this time on until Benny slid down into the gulf of insolvency; owing his uncle some two hundred pounds, and leaving assets that the latter reckoned would scarce amount to four shillings in the pound, he seems to have had no success of any sort except that of winning the hand of a girl for whom Franklin and Deborah had a peculiar partiality. This was after Benny had returned to Boston and, as a bookseller as well as a printer, had begun life anew with a loan from his uncle, and with good credit.

When he was "near being married" his uncle wrote to Jane:

I know nothing of that affair, but what you write me, except that I think Miss Betsey a very agreeable, sweet-tempered, good girl, who has had a housewifely education, and will make, to a good husband, a very good wife. Your sister and I have a great esteem for her; and, if she will be kind enough to accept of our nephew, we think it will be his own fault, if he is not as happy as the married state can make him. The family is a respectable one, but whether there be any fortune I know not; and, as you do not inquire about this particular, I suppose you think with me, that where everything else desirable is to be met with, that is not very material.

What Deborah thought of Miss Betsey may be inferred from a postscript that she hastily annexed to this letter: "If Benny will promise to be one of the tenderest husbands in the world, I give my consent. He knows already what I think of Miss Betsey. I am his loving aunt." In a subsequent letter, Franklin wrote to Deborah from London that he was glad that "Ben has got that good girl." Miss Betsey did not prove to be a fortune to her husband, though she did prove to be such a fruitful wife to him that, when the crash of bankruptcy came, there were a number of small children to be included in his schedule of liabilities. Nor is it easy to see how she or any other woman could prove a fortune to any man of whom such a picture could be sketched as that which Thomas, the author of the History of Printing, sketches of Benny as he was shortly after his return from Antigua.

Benjamin Mecom [writes Thomas] was in Boston several months before the arrival of his press and types from Antigua, and had much leisure. During this interval he frequently came to the house where I was an apprentice. He was handsomely dressed, wore a powdered bob-wig, ruffles, and gloves: gentleman-like appendages, which the printers of that day did not assume – and thus appareled, he would often assist for an hour at the press… I viewed him at the press with admiration. He indeed put on a apron to save his clothes from blacking, and guarded his ruffles… He got the nickname of "Queer Notions" among the printers.

The result of it all was that the patience of the uncle was at last completely worn out. "I can not comprehend," he wrote to Deborah from London, "how so very sluggish a Creature as Ben. Mecom is grown, can maintain in Philadelphia so large a Family. I hope they do not hang upon you: for really as we grow old and must grow more helpless, we shall find we have nothing to spare."

In a subsequent letter to Williams he spoke of his sister's children as if they were all thriftless. If such was the case, it was not because of any lack of interest on his part in them. In a letter, recommending his son William to Jane's motherly care and advice, he says, "My compliments to my new niece, Miss Abiah, and pray her to accept the enclosed piece of gold, to cut her teeth; it may afterwards buy nuts for them to crack." In another letter to his sister, he expresses pleasure at hearing that her son Peter is at a place where he has full employ. If Peter should get a habit of industry at his new place, the exchange, he said pointedly, would be a happy one. In a later letter to Jane, he declares that he is glad that Peter is acquainted with the crown-soap business and that he hopes that he will always take care to make the soap faithfully and never slight the manufacture, or attempt to deceive by appearances. Then he may boldly put his name and mark, and, in a little time, it will acquire as good a character as that made by his uncle (John) or any other person whatever. He also tells Jane that if Peter will send to Deborah a box of his soap (but not unless it be right good) she would immediately return the ready money to him for it. Many years later his letters to his sister show that he was then aiding her in different ways, and among others by buying soap of her manufacture from her, and that some cakes of this soap were sent by him as gifts to friends of his in France. Indeed, he told Jane that she would do well to instruct her grandson in the art of making that soap. In the same letter that he wrote to her about Peter and the crown-soap he sent his love to her son Neddy, and Neddy's wife, and the rest of Jane's children. Neddy, born like Benny under an unlucky star, had at the time not only a wife but a disorder which his uncle hoped that he would wear out gradually, as he was yet a young man. If Eben, another of Jane's sons, would be industrious and frugal, it was ten to one, his uncle said, that he would get rich; for he seemed to have spirit and activity. As to Johnny, still another of Jane's sons, if he ever set up as a goldsmith, he should remember that there was one accomplishment, without which he could not possibly thrive in that trade; that was perfect honesty. In the latter part of his life, after he had been badly hurt by Benny, and had seen so much of his sound counsel come to nothing, he was slower to give advice to the Mecoms.

Your Grandson [he wrote to Jane, referring to one of her grandsons, who was for a time in his employment at Philadelphia] behaves very well, and is constantly employ'd in writing for me, and will be so some time longer. As to my Reproving and Advising him, which you desire, he has not hitherto appeared to need it, which is lucky, as I am not fond of giving Advice, having seldom seen it taken. An Italian Poet in his Account of a Voyage to the Moon, tells us that

All things lost on Earth are treasur'd there.

on which somebody observ'd, There must then be in the Moon a great deal of Good Advice.

Among the letters from Franklin to Jonathan Williams, the elder, is one asking him to lay out for his account the sum of fifty pounds in the purchase of a marriage present for one of Jane's daughters, who thanks him for it in terms that fall little short of ecstacy.

But attached as Franklin was to his sister he did not hesitate to reprove her when reproof was in his judgment necessary. There is such a thing as not caring enough for a person to reprove him. "It was not kind in you," he wrote to her on one occasion, "when your sister commended good works, to suppose she intended it a reproach to you. It was very far from her thoughts." His language was still more outspoken on another occasion when Jane wished him to oust a member of the Franklin connection, with whom she was at odds, from the Post Office to make a place for Benny.

And now [he said] as to what you propose for Benny, I believe he may be, as you say, well enough qualified for it; and, when he appears to be settled, if a vacancy should happen, it is very probable he may be thought of to supply it; but it is a rule with me not to remove any officer, that behaves well, keeps regular accounts, and pays duly; and I think the rule is founded on reason and justice. I have not shown any backwardness to assist Benny, where it could be done without injuring another. But if my friends require of me to gratify not only their inclinations, but their resentments, they expect too much of me. Above all things I dislike family quarrels, and, when they happen among my relations, nothing gives me more pain. If I were to set myself up as a judge of those subsisting between you and brother's widow and children, how unqualified must I be, at this distance, to determine rightly, especially having heard but one side. They always treated me with friendly and affectionate regard; you have done the same. What can I say between you, but that I wish you were reconciled, and that I will love that side best, that is most ready to forgive and oblige the other? You will be angry with me here, for putting you and them too much upon a footing; but I shall nevertheless be, dear sister, your truly affectionate brother.

Nor did he attempt to disguise his real feelings in a letter which he wrote to Jane near the end of his life in which he told her that her son-in-law, Collas, who kept a store in Carolina, had wished to buy some goods on credit at Philadelphia, but could not do it without his recommendation, which he could not give without making himself pecuniarily liable; and that he was not inclined to do, having no opinion either of the honesty and punctuality of the people, with whom Collas proposed to traffic, or of his skill and acuteness in merchandizing. This he wrote, he declared, merely to apologize for any seeming unkindness. The unkindness was but seeming indeed; for the letter also contained these solicitous words:

You always tell me that you live comfortably; but I sometimes suspect that you may be too unwilling to acquaint me with any of your Difficulties from an Apprehension of giving me Pain. I wish you would let me know precisely your Situation, that I may better proportion my Assistance to your Wants. Have you any Money at Interest, and what does it produce? Or do you do some kind of Business for a Living?

Jane seems to have maintained her good humor in the face of every timely reproof of her brother, and other than timely reproofs, we may be sure, there were none. Indeed, she worshipped him so devoutly – devotedly is too feeble an adverb – that there was no need for her at any time in her relations with him to fall back upon her good nature. A few extracts from her letters to Franklin will show how deeply the love and gratitude excited by her brother's ceaseless beneficence sank into her heart.

I am amazed beyond measure [she wrote to Deborah, when she heard of the threatened attack on Franklin's house] that your house was threatened in the tumult. I thought there had been none among you would proceed to such a length to persecute a man merely for being the best of characters, and really deserving good from the hand and tongue of all his fellow creatures… What a wretched world would this be if the vile of mankind had no laws to restrain them.

Additional edge to the indignation, expressed in this letter, was doubtless given by the fact that the writer had just received from her brother, who was then in London, a box containing, among other things, "a printed cotton gown, a quilted coat, a bonnet, a cap, and some ribbons" for herself and each of her daughters.

It is made manifest by other letters than this that her brother's benevolence towards her and her family were quite as active when he was abroad as when he was at home. In 1779, she tells him that, in a letter from him to her, he, like himself, does all for her that the most affectionate brother can be desired or expected to do.

And though [she further said] I feel myself full of gratitude for your generosity, the conclusion of your letter affects me more, where you say you wish we may spend our last days together. O my dear brother, if this could be accomplished, it would give me more joy than anything on this side Heaven could possibly do. I feel the want of a suitable conversation – I have but little here. I think I could assume more freedom with you now, and convince you of my affection for you. I have had time to reflect and see my error in that respect. I suffered my diffidence and the awe of your superiority to prevent the familiarity I might have taken with you, and ought, and (which) your kindness to me might have convinced me would be acceptable.

A little later she wrote:

Your very affectionate and tender care of me all along in life excites my warmest gratitude, which I cannot even think on without tears. What manifold blessings I enjoy beyond many of my worthy acquaintance, who have been driven from their home, lost their interest, and some have the addition of lost health, and one the grievous torment of a cancer, and no kind brother to support her, while I am kindly treated by all about me, and ample provision made for me when I have occasion.

As heartfelt was another letter written by her while he was still in France:

Believe me, my dear brother, your writing to me gives me so much pleasure that the great, the very great presents you have sent me are but a secondary joy. I have been very sick this winter at my daughter's; kept my chamber six weeks, but had a sufficiency for my supply of everything that could be a comfort to me of my own, before I received any intimation of the great bounty from your hand, which your letter has conveyed to me, for I have not been lavish of what I before possessed, knowing sickness and misfortunes might happen, and certainly old age; but I shall now be so rich that I may indulge in a small degree a propensity to help some poor creatures who have not the blessing I enjoy. My good fortune came to me altogether to comfort me in my weak state; for as I had been so unlucky as not to receive the letter you sent me through your son Bache's hands, though he informs me he forwarded it immediately. His letter with a draft for twenty five guineas came to my hand just before yours, which I have received, and cannot find expression suitable to acknowledge my gratitude how I am by my dear brother enabled to live at ease in my old age (after a life of care, labor, and anxiety) without which I must have been miserable.

Most touching of all are the words which she addressed to her brother shortly before his death, "Who that know and love you can bear the thought of surviving you in this gloomy world?" Even after his death, his goodness continued to shield her from want, for by his will he devised to her absolutely the house in Unity Street, Boston, in which she lived, and bequeathed to her an annuity of sixty pounds. By his will, he also bequeathed to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, living at the time of his decease, in equal shares, fifty pounds sterling; the same amount that he bequeathed to the descendants living at that time of his brother Samuel, his sister Anne Harris, his brother James, his sister Sarah and his sister Lydia, respectively.

As we have seen, Franklin's feelings about Deborah's relatives were hardly less cordial than his feelings about his own. In addition to his mother-in-law, Mrs. Read, and Brother John Read and Sister Read, and Cousin Debbey, and young cousin Johnny Read, two other kinsmen of Deborah, Joseph Read and James Read are mentioned in his letters. Indeed, at one time he even contrived to ward off the Franklins, Mecoms and Davenports from the Post Office long enough to appoint Joseph to the Postmastership at Philadelphia; but James was so unfortunate as to rub against one of the most highly sensitive surfaces of his disposition. In a letter to him, Franklin says, "Your visits never had but one thing disagreeable in them, that is, they were always too short"; but, in a later letter, he assails Read fiercely for surreptitiously obtaining a judgment against Robert Grace, one of the original members of the Junto, and produces a power of attorney to himself from William Strahan, authorizing him to recover a large sum of money that Read owed Strahan. "Fortune's wheel is often turning," he grimly reminds Read. The whole letter is written with a degree of asperity that Franklin rarely exhibited except when his sense of injustice was highly inflamed, and the circumstances, under which Read secured the judgment, the "little charges," that he had cunningly accumulated on it, and the cordial affection of Franklin for Grace would appear to have fully justified Franklin's stern rebuke and exultant production of Strahan's power of attorney. But everything, it must be confessed, becomes just a little clearer when we learn from a subsequent letter of Franklin to Strahan that, before he received Strahan's power of attorney and account, there had been a misunderstanding between Read and himself,

occasion'd by his endeavouring to get a small Office from me (Clerk to the Assembly) which I took the more amiss, as we had always been good Friends, and the Office could not have been of much Service to him, the Salary being small; but valuable to me, as a means of securing the Public Business to our Printing House.

The reader will remember that Franklin reserved the right to make full reprisals when anyone undertook to dislodge him from a public office.

Nor, as has been apparent enough, was the interest of Franklin limited to contemporary Franklins. If he had been a descendant of one of the high-bred Washingtons of Northamptonshire – the shire to which the lineage of George Washington, as well as his own, ran back – he could not have been more curious about his descent than he was. "I have ever had pleasure," the opening sentence of the Autobiography declares, "in obtaining any little anecdotes of my ancestors." From notes, placed in his hands by his uncle Benjamin, he learned some interesting particulars about his English forbears. They had resided in the village of Ecton, in Northamptonshire, on the great northern turnpike, sixty-six miles from London, for certainly three hundred years, on a freehold of about thirty acres, and the eldest son of the family had always been bred to the trade of a blacksmith.[28 - In sending a MS. to Edward Everett, which he placed in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Thomas Carlyle said: "The poor manuscript is an old Tithes-Book of the parish of Ecton, in Northamptonshire, from about 1640 to 1700, and contains, I perceive, various scattered faint indications of the civil war time, which are not without interest; but the thing which should raise it above all tithe-books yet heard of is, that it contains actual notices, in that fashion, of the ancestors of Benjamin Franklin – blacksmiths in that parish! Here they are – their forge-hammers yet going – renting so many 'yard lands' of Northamptonshire Church-soil – keeping so many sheep, etc., etc., – little conscious that one of the demi-gods was about to proceed out of them."] Perhaps as Parton conjectures, some swart Franklin at the ancestral forge on the little freehold may have tightened a rivet in the armor, or replaced a shoe upon the horse, of a Washington, or doffed his cap to a Washington riding past. From the registers, examined by Franklin, when he visited Ecton, which ended with the year 1755, he discovered that he was the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations back.

One of his letters to Deborah contained much agreeable information about his and her English relations, which he collected at this time. After leaving Cambridge, where his vanity, he said, had been not a little gratified by the particular regard shown him by the chancellor and the vice-chancellor of the university and the heads of colleges, he found on inquiry at Wellingborough that Mary Fisher, the daughter and only child of Thomas Franklin, his father's eldest brother, was still living. He knew that she had lived at Wellingborough, and had been married there about fifty years before to one Richard Fisher, a grazier and tanner, but, supposing that she and her husband were both dead, he had inquired for their posterity.

I was directed [he says] to their house, and we found them both alive, but weak with age, very glad however to see us. She seems to have been a very smart, sensible woman. They are wealthy, have left off business, and live comfortably. They have had only one child, a daughter, who died, when about thirty years of age, unmarried. She gave me several of my uncle Benjamin's letters to her, and acquainted me where the other remains of the family lived, of which I have, since my return to London, found out a daughter of my father's only sister, very old, and never married. She is a good, clever woman, but poor, though vastly contented with her situation, and very cheerful. The others are in different parts of the country. I intend to visit them, but they were too much out of our tour in that journey.

This was in 1758. Mary Fisher had good reason to be weak with age; for this letter states that she was five years older than Franklin's sister Dowse, and remembered her going away with Franklin's father and his first wife and two other children to New England about the year 1685, or some seventy-three years before Franklin's visit to Wellingborough.

"Where are the old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen."

Only the truly gray earth, humming, as it revolves on its axis, the derisive song, heard by the fine ear of Emerson, could ask this question, unrebuked by such a stretch of human memory as that. The letter then goes on to say that from Wellingborough the writer passed to Ecton, about three or four miles away, where Franklin's father was born, and where his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had lived, and how many of the family before them they knew not.

We went first [Franklin tells us] to see the old house and grounds; they came to Mr. Fisher with his wife, and, after letting them for some years, finding his rent something ill paid, he sold them. The land is now added to another farm, and a school kept in the house. It is a decayed old stone building, but still known by the name of the Franklin House. Thence we went to visit the rector of the parish, who lives close by the church, a very ancient building. He entertained us very kindly, and showed us the old church register, in which were the births, marriages, and burials of our ancestors for two hundred years, as early as his book began. His wife, a good-natured, chatty old lady (granddaughter of the famous Archdeacon Palmer, who formerly had that parish, and lived there) remembered a great deal about the family; carried us out into the churchyard, and showed us several of their gravestones, which were so covered with moss, that we could not read the letters, till she ordered a hard brush and basin of water, with which Peter (Franklin's negro servant) scoured them clean, and then Billy (William Franklin) copied them. She entertained and diverted us highly with stories of Thomas Franklin, Mrs. Fisher's father, who was a conveyancer, something of a lawyer, clerk of the county courts and clerk to the Archdeacon in his visitations; a very leading man in all county affairs, and much employed in public business. He set on foot a subscription for erecting chimes in their steeple, and completed it, and we heard them play. He found out an easy method of saving their village meadows from being drowned, as they used to be sometimes by the river, which method is still in being; but, when first proposed, nobody could conceive how it could be; "but however," they said, "if Franklin says he knows how to do it, it will be done." His advice and opinion were sought for on all occasions, by all sorts of people, and he was looked upon, she said, by some, as something of a conjuror. He died just four years before I was born, on the same day of the same month.

The likeness between Thomas and his nephew may have been insufficient under any circumstances to justly suggest the thought of a metempsychosis to William Franklin, but Thomas does seem to have been a kind of tentative effort upon the part of Nature to create a Benjamin Franklin.

The letter then states that, after leaving Ecton, the party finally arrived at Birmingham where they were soon successful in looking up Deborah's and cousin Wilkinson's and cousin Cash's relations. First, they found one of the Cashes, and he went with them to Rebecca Flint's where they saw her and her husband. She was a turner, and he a button-maker; they were childless and glad to see any person that knew their sister Wilkinson. They told their visitors what letters they had received from America, and even assured them – such are the short and simple annals of the poor – that they had out of respect preserved a keg in which a gift of sturgeon from America had reached them. Then follow certain details about other members of this family connection, commonplace enough, however, to reconcile us to the fact that they have been cut short by the mordant tooth of time which has not spared the remainder of the letter.

On his second mission to England, Franklin paid another visit to these Birmingham relations of his wife, and was in that city for several days. The severest test of a good husband is to ask whether he loves his wife's relations as much as his own. To even this test Franklin appears to have been equal.

Sally Franklin, the daughter of Thomas Franklin, of Lutterworth, a second cousin of Franklin, also flits through the correspondence between Deborah and her husband. When she was about thirteen years of age, her father brought her to London to see Franklin, and Mrs. Stevenson persuaded him to leave the child under her care for a little schooling and improvement, while Franklin was off on one of his periodical tours.

When I return'd [the latter wrote to Deborah] I found her indeed much improv'd, and grown a fine Girl. She is sensible, and of a sweet, obliging Temper, but is now ill of a violent Fever, and I doubt we shall lose her, which particularly afflicts Mrs. Stevenson, not only as she has contracted a great Affection for the Child, but as it was she that persuaded her Father to leave her there.

Sally, however, settled all doubts by getting well and furnishing future material for Franklin's letters to Deborah. One letter tells Deborah that Sally's father was very desirous that Franklin should take her to America with him; another pays the compliment to Sally, who was at the time in the country with her father, of saying that she is a very good girl; another thanks Deborah for her kind attitude toward her husband's partially-formed resolution of bringing Sally over to America with him; another announces that Sally is again with Mrs. Stevenson; and still another doubtless relieved Deborah of no little uncertainty of mind by informing her that Sally was about to be married to a farmer's son. "I shall miss her," comments Franklin, "as she is nimble-footed and willing to run of Errands and wait upon me, and has been very serviceable to me for some Years, so that I have not kept a Man."

Among Franklin's papers, too, was found at his death a letter from his father to him, beginning "Loving Son," which also makes some valuable contributions to our knowledge of Franklin's forefathers.

As to the original of our name, there is various opinions [says Josiah]; some say that it came from a sort of title, of which a book that you bought when here gives a lively account, some think we are of a French extract, which was formerly called Franks; some of a free line, a line free from that vassalage which was common to subjects in days of old; some from a bird of long red legs. Your uncle Benjamin made inquiry of one skilled in heraldry, who told him there is two coats of armor, one belonging to the Franklins of the North, and one to the Franklins of the west. However, our circumstances have been such as that it hath hardly been worth while to concern ourselves much about these things any farther than to tickle the fancy a little.

Josiah then has a word to say about his great-grandfather, the Franklin who kept his Bible under a joint stool during the reign of Bloody Mary, and his grandfather. The former, he says, in his travels

went upon liking to a taylor; but he kept such a stingy house, that he left him and travelled farther, and came to a smith's house, and coming on a fasting day, being in popish times, he did not like there the first day; the next morning the servant was called up at five in the morning, but after a little time came a good toast and good beer, and he found good housekeeping there; he served and learned the trade of a smith.

Josiah's grandfather, the letter tells us, was a smith also, and settled in Ecton, and "was imprisoned a year and a day on suspicion of his being the author of some poetry that touched the character of some great man." An ancestry that could boast one sturdy Tubal Cain, ready, though the fires of Smithfield were brightly burning, to hazard his life for his religious convictions, and another, with letters and courage enough to lampoon a great man in England in the sixteenth or the seventeenth century, is an ancestry that was quite worthy of investigation. It at least tickles the fancy a little, to use Josiah's phrase, to imagine that the flame of the Ecton forge lit up, generation after generation, the face of some brawny, honest toiler, not unlike the village blacksmith, whose rugged figure and manly, simple-hearted, God-fearing nature are portrayed with so much dignity and beauty in the well-known verses of Longfellow. Be this as it may, the humble lot of neither ancestral nor contemporary Franklins was a source of mortification to Poor Richard even after the popularity of his Almanac had brought in a pair of shoes, two new shifts, and a new warm petticoat to his wife, and to him a second-hand coat, so good that he was no longer ashamed to go to town or be seen there.

"He that has neither fools nor beggars among his kindred, is the son of a thunder gust," said Poor Richard.

CHAPTER V

Franklin's American Friends