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

For Quincy's highly promising son, Josiah, who died at sea at the early age of thirty-five, Franklin formed a warm regard when Josiah came over to London during the second mission of Franklin to England. To the father he wrote of the son in terms that were doubtless deeply gratifying to him, and, in a letter to James Bowdoin, he said: "I am much pleased with Mr. Quincy. It is a thousand pities his strength of body is not equal to his strength of mind. His zeal for the public, like that of David for God's house, will, I fear, eat him up." Later, when the younger Quincy's zeal had actually consumed him, Franklin wrote to the elder Quincy:

The epitaph on my dear and much esteemed young Friend, is too well written to be capable of Improvement by any Corrections of mine. Your Moderation appears in it, since the natural affection of a Parent has not induced you to exaggerate his Virtues. I shall always mourn his Loss with you; a Loss not easily made up to his Country.

And then, referring to some of the falsehoods in circulation about his own conduct as Commissioner, he exclaimed: "How differently constituted was his noble and generous Mind from that of the miserable Calumniators you mention! Having Plenty of Merit in himself, he was not jealous of the Appearance of Merit in others, but did Justice to their Characters with as much Pleasure as these People do Injury."

When he sat down at Saratoga to write to a few friends by way of farewell, fearing that the mission to Canada at his time of life would prove too much for him, Quincy was the first of his New England friends to whom he sent an adieu.

To Dr. Samuel Cooper, Franklin wrote some of the most valuable of all his political letters, but the correspondence between them is marked by few details of a personal or social nature. It was upon the recommendation of Franklin that the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon Cooper by the University of Edinburgh. "The Part I took in the Application for your Degree," he wrote to Dr. Cooper, "was merely doing justice to Merit, which is the Duty of an honest Man whenever he has the Opportunity." That Dr. Cooper was duly grateful, we may infer, among other things, from a letter in which Franklin tells his sister Jane that he is obliged to good Dr. Cooper for his prayers. That he was able to hold his own even with such a skilful dispenser of compliments as Franklin himself we may readily believe after reading the letter to Franklin in which he used these words: "You once told me in a letter, as you were going to France, the public had had the eating your flesh and seemed resolved to pick your bones – we all agree the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat." It was to Dr. Cooper that Franklin expressed the hope that America would never deserve the reproof administered to an enthusiastical knave in Pennsylvania, who, when asked by his creditor to give him a bond and pay him interest, replied:

No, I cannot do that; I cannot in conscience either receive or pay Interest, it is against my Principle. You have then the Conscience of a Rogue, says the Creditor: You tell me it is against your Principle to pay Interest; and it being against your Interest to pay the Principal, I perceive you do not intend to pay me either one or t'other.

The letters of Franklin to James Bowdoin are full of interest, but the interest is scientific.

Another Boston friend of Franklin was Mather Byles. In a letter to him, Franklin expresses his pleasure at learning that the lives of Byles and his daughters had been protected by his "points," and his regret that electricity had not really proved what it was at first supposed to be – a cure for the palsy.

It is however happy for you [Franklin said], that, when Old Age and that Malady have concurr'd to infeeble you, and to disable you for Writing, you have a Daughter at hand to nurse you with filial Attention, and to be your Secretary, of which I see she is very capable, by the Elegance and Correctness of her Writing in the Letter I am now answering.

Other letters from Franklin to Byles have unhappily perished. This fact is brought to our knowledge by a letter from him to Elizabeth Partridge, which shows that even the famous letter to her, in which he spoke of the end of his brother as if he had gone off quietly from a party of pleasure in a sedan chair, led for a time a precarious existence. If this was the letter, he said, of which she desired a copy, he fancied that she might possibly find it in Boston, as Dr. Byles once wrote to him that many copies had been taken of it. Then follows this playful and characteristic touch. "I too, should have been glad to have seen that again, among others I had written to him and you. But you inform me they were eaten by the Mice. Poor little innocent Creatures, I am sorry they had no better Food. But since they like my Letters, here is another Treat for them."

Another Massachusetts friend of Franklin was Samuel Danforth, the President of its Colonial Council. "It gave me great pleasure," Franklin wrote to this friend on one occasion, "to receive so chearful an Epistle from a Friend of half a Century's Standing, and to see him commencing Life anew in so valuable a Son." When this letter was written, Franklin was in his sixty-eighth year, but how far he was from being sated with the joy of living other passages in it clearly manifest.

I hope [he said] for the great Pleasure of once more seeing and conversing with you: And tho' living-on in one's Children, as we both may do, is a good thing, I cannot but fancy it might be better to continue living ourselves at the same time. I rejoice, therefore, in your kind Intentions of including me in the Benefits of that inestimable Stone, which, curing all Diseases (even old Age itself) will enable us to see the future glorious state of our America, enjoying in full security her own Liberties, and offering in her Bosom a Participation of them to all the oppress'd of other Nations. I anticipate the jolly Conversation we and twenty more of our Friends may have 100 Years hence on this subject, over that well replenish'd Bowl at Cambridge Commencement.

In Connecticut, too, Franklin had some highly prized friends. Among them were Jared Eliot, the grandson of Apostle Eliot, and the author of an essay upon Field Husbandry in New England, Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, Dr. Samuel Johnson and Jared Ingersoll. The letters from Franklin to Eliot are a charming mélange of what is now known as Popular Science and Agriculture. To Franklin there was philosophy even in the roasting of an egg, and for agriculture he had the partiality which no one, so close to all the pulsations of nature as he was, can fail to entertain. When he heard from his friend Mrs. Catherine Greene that her son Ray was "smart in the farming way," he wrote to her, "I think agriculture the most honourable of all employments, being the most independent. The farmer has no need of popular favour, nor the favour of the great; the success of his crops depending only on the blessing of God upon his honest industry." Franklin, of course, was writing before the day of the trust, the high protective tariff, the San José scale and the boll weevil.

In one letter to Eliot he gossips delightfully upon such diverse topics as the price of linseed oil, the kind of land on which Pennsylvania hemp was raised, the recent weather, northeast storms, the origin of springs, sea-shell strata and import duties. Something is also said in the letter about grass seed, and it is curious to note that apparently Franklin was not aware that in parts of New England timothy has always been known as herd's-grass. And this reminds us that he repeatedly in his later life protested against the use in New England of the word "improve" in the sense of "employ" as a barbarous innovation, when in point of fact the word had been used in that sense in a lampoon in the Courant, when that lively sheet was being published under his youthful management. In another letter, written probably in the year 1749, Franklin tells Eliot that he had purchased some eighteen months before about three hundred acres of land near Burlington, and was resolved to improve it in the best and speediest manner. "My fortune, (thank God)," he said, "is such that I can enjoy all the necessaries and many of the Indulgences of Life; but I think that in Duty to my children I ought so to manage, that the profits of my Farm may Balance the loss my Income will Suffer by my retreat to it." He then proceeds to narrate to Eliot what he had done to secure this result; how he had scoured up the ditches and drains in one meadow, reduced it to an arable condition, and reaped a good crop of oat fodder from it, and how he had then immediately ploughed the meadow again and harrowed it, and sowed it with different kinds of grass seed. "Take the whole together," he said with decided satisfaction, "it is well-matted, and looks like a green corn-field." He next tells how he drained a round pond of twelve acres, and seeded the soil previously covered by it, too. Even in such modest operations as these the quick observation and precise standards of a man, who was perhaps first of all a man of science, are apparent. He noted that the red clover came up in four days and the herd's-grass in six days, that the herd's-grass was less sensitive to frost than the red clover, and that the thicker grass seed is sown the less injured by the frost the young grass is apt to be. By actual experiment, he found that a bushel of clean chaff of timothy or salem grass seed would yield five quarts of seed. In another letter to Eliot he has a word to say about the Schuyler copper mine in New Jersey (the only valuable copper mine in America that he knew of) which yielded good copper and turned out vast wealth to its owners. And then there is a ray from the splendor in which the lordly Schuylers lived in this bit of descriptive detail:

Col. John Schuyler, one of the owners, has a deer park five miles round, fenced with cedar logs, five logs high, with blocks of wood between. It contains a variety of land, high and low, woodland and clear. There are a great many deer in it; and he expects in a few years to be able to kill two hundred head a year, which will be a very profitable thing. He has likewise six hundred acres of meadow, all within bank.

The fact that Col. John Schuyler had six hundred acres of meadow land within bank was not lost on Eliot; for later Franklin writes to him again promising to obtain from Colonel Schuyler a particular account of the method pursued by him in improving this land. "In return," said Franklin, "(for you know there is no Trade without Returns) I request you to procure for me a particular Acct of the manner of making a new kind of Fence we saw at Southhold, on Long Island, which consists of a Bank and Hedge." With the exactitude of an experimental philosopher, he then details the precise particulars that he desired, disclosing in doing so the fact that Pennsylvania was beginning in many places to be at a loss for wood to fence with. This statement need not surprise the reader, for in his Account of the New-Invented Pennsylvanian Fireplaces, published some six years before, Franklin informs us that wood, at that time the common fuel, which could be formerly obtained at every man's door, had then to be fetched near one hundred miles to some towns, and made a very considerable article in the expense of families. From this same essay, we learn that it was deemed uncertain by Franklin whether "Pit-Coal" would ever be discovered in Pennsylvania! In another letter from Franklin to Eliot, along with some items about Peter Collinson, "a most benevolent, worthy man, very curious in botany and other branches of natural history, and fond of improvements in agriculture, &c.," Hugh Roberts' high opinion of Eliot's "Pieces," ditching, the Academy, barometers, thermometers and hygrometers, Franklin has some sprightly observations to make upon the love of praise. Rarely, we venture to say, have more winning arguments ever been urged for the reversal of the world's judgment upon any point.

What you mention concerning the love of praise is indeed very true; it reigns more or less in every heart; though we are generally hypocrites, in that respect, and pretend to disregard praise, and our nice, modest ears are offended, forsooth, with what one of the ancients calls the sweetest kind of music. This hypocrisy is only a sacrifice to the pride of others, or to their envy; both which, I think, ought rather to be mortified. The same sacrifice we make, when we forbear to praise ourselves, which naturally we are all inclined to; and I suppose it was formerly the fashion, or Virgil, that courtly writer, would not have put a speech into the mouth of his hero, which now-a-days we should esteem so great an indecency;

"Sum pius Æneas …
… famâ super æther a notus."

One of the Romans, I forget who, justified speaking in his own praise by saying, Every freeman had a right to speak what he thought of himself as well as of others. That this is a natural inclination appears in that all children show it, and say freely, I am a good boy; Am I not a good girl? and the like, till they have been frequently chid, and told their trumpeter is dead; and that it is unbecoming to sound their own praise, &c. But naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret. Being forbid to praise themselves, they learn instead of it to censure others; which is only a roundabout way of praising themselves; for condemning the conduct of another, in any particular, amounts to as much as saying, I am so honest, or wise, or good, or prudent, that I could not do or approve of such an action. This fondness for ourselves, rather than malevolence to others, I take to be the general source of censure and back biting; and I wish men had not been taught to dam up natural currents, to the overflowing and damage of their neighbour's grounds.

Another advantage, methinks, would arise from freely speaking our good thoughts of ourselves, viz. if we were wrong in them, somebody or other would readily set us right; but now, while we conceal so carefully our vain, erroneous self-opinions, we may carry them to our grave, for who would offer physic to a man that seems to be in health? And the privilege of recounting freely our own good actions might be an inducement to the doing of them, that we might be enabled to speak of them without being subject to be justly contradicted or charged with falsehood; whereas now, as we are not allowed to mention them, and it is an uncertainty whether others will take due notice of them or not, we are perhaps the more indifferent about them; so that, upon the whole, I wish the out-of-fashion practice of praising ourselves would, like other old fashions, come round into fashion again. But this I fear will not be in our time, so we must even be contented with what little praise we can get from one another. And I will endeavour to make you some amends for the trouble of reading this long scrawl, by telling you, that I have the sincerest esteem for you, as an ingenious man and a good one, which together make the valuable member of society.

It is letters like this that cause us to feel that, if it were known that the lost letters of Franklin were somewhere still in existence, the world might well organize another company of Argonauts to find them.

In a subsequent letter to Eliot, Franklin thanks him for his gift of Merino wool, and tells him that it was one Mr. Masters who made dung of leaves, and not Mr. Roberts. In the same letter, he takes occasion to let Eliot know that Peter Collinson has written to him that the worthy, learned and ingenious Mr. Jackson, who had been prevailed on to give some dissertations on the husbandry of Norfolk for the benefit of the Colonies, admired Eliot's agricultural tracts. In still another letter to Eliot, Franklin, true to the brief that he held for love of praise, writes to him in these terms of unreserved gratification:

The Tatler tells us of a Girl, who was observed to grow suddenly proud, and none cou'd guess the Reason, till it came to be known that she had got on a new Pair of Garters. Lest you should be puzzled to guess the Cause, when you observe any Thing of the kind in me, I think I will not hide my new Garters under my Petticoats, but take the Freedom to show them to you, in a paragraph of our friend Collinson's Letter, viz. – But I ought to mortify, and not indulge, this Vanity; I will not transcribe the Paragraph, yet I cannot forbear.

He then transcribes the paragraph in which Collinson had informed him that the Grand Monarch of France had commanded the Abbé Mazeas to write a letter in the politest terms to the Royal Society, to return the King's thanks and compliments in an express manner to Mr. Franklin of Pennsylvania for his useful discoveries in electricity, and the application of pointed rods to prevent the terrible effect of thunderstorms. "I think, now I have stuck a Feather in thy Cap," ended Collinson, "I may be allowed to conclude in wishing thee long to wear it."

On reconsidering this Paragraph [continued Franklin], I fear I have not so much Reason to be proud as the Girl had; for a Feather in the Cap is not so useful a Thing, or so serviceable to the Wearer, as a Pair of good silk Garters. The Pride of Man is very differently gratify'd; and, had his Majesty sent me a marshal's staff, I think I should scarce have been so proud of it, as I am of your Esteem.

There were many principles of congeniality at work to cause Franklin to open his heart so familiarly to Eliot, but one of the most active doubtless was their common love of good stories. "I remember with Pleasure the cheerful Hours I enjoy'd last Winter in your Company," he wrote to Eliot, after his visit to New England in 1754, "and would with all my heart give any ten of the thick old Folios that stand on the Shelves before me, for a little book of the Stories you then told with so much Propriety and Humor."

We have already referred to the famous letter, in which, Franklin, a few weeks before his death, stated his religious creed with such unfaltering clearness and directness to Dr. Ezra Stiles, who had written to him, saying that he wished to know the opinion of his venerable friend concerning Jesus of Nazareth, and expressing the hope that he would not impute this to impertinence or improper curiosity in one, who, for so many years, had continued to love, estimate and reverence his abilities and literary character with an ardor and affection bordering on adoration. In his reply, Franklin declared that he had never before been questioned upon religion, and he asked Dr. Stiles not to publish what he had written.

I have ever [he said] let others enjoy their religious Sentiments, without reflecting on them for those that appeared to me unsupportable and even absurd. All Sects here, and we have a great Variety, have experienced my good will in assisting them with Subscriptions for building their new Places of Worship; and, as I have never opposed any of their Doctrines, I hope to go out of the World in Peace with them all.

This letter is so full of interest for the reader that it is to be regretted that Dr. Stiles did not oftener indulge the national weakness for asking questions before his aged correspondent went out of the world in peace with the sects, which most assuredly would have followed him with a shower of stones as thick as that which overwhelmed St. Stephen, if they had known that the discreet old philosopher, who contrived to keep on such comfortable working terms with every one of them, doubted all the while the divinity of our Lord. This letter also has a readable word to say in response to the honor that Dr. Stiles proposed to do Franklin by placing his portrait in the same room at Yale with that of Governor Yale, whom Franklin pronounced "a great and good man." Yale College, Franklin gratefully recalled, was the first learned society that took notice of him, and adorned him with its honors, though it was from the University of St. Andrews that he received the title which made him known to the world as "Dr. Franklin."

Dr. Samuel Johnson has been termed "the venerable father of the Episcopal Church of Connecticut and the apostle of sound learning and elegant literature in New England," and it is not surprising that Franklin should have strained his dialectical skill almost to the point of casuistry in an effort to meet the various reasons which the Doctor gave him for his hesitation about accepting the headship of the Academy, such as his years, his fear of the small-pox, the politeness of Philadelphia and his imagined rusticity, his diffidence of his powers and his reluctance about drawing off parishioners from Dr. Jenney, the rector of Christ Church and St. Peters. As we have seen, even the multiplying effect of setting up more than one pigeon box against a house was ineffective to lure the apprehensive churchman to Philadelphia. In one of his letters to Dr. Johnson, the enthusiasm of Franklin over the Academy project endows his words with real nobility of utterance.

I think with you [he said], that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are, in my opinion, the strength of a state far more so than riches or arms, which, under the management of Ignorance and Wickedness, often draw on destruction, instead of providing for the safety of a people. And though the culture bestowed on many should be successful only with a few, yet the influence of those few and the service in their power may be very great. Even a single woman, that was wise, by her wisdom saved a city.

I think also, that general virtue is more probably to be expected and obtained from the education of youth, than from the exhortation of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being, like diseases of the body, more easily prevented than cured. I think, moreover, that talents for the education of youth are the gift of God; and that he on whom they are bestowed, whenever a way is opened for the use of them, is as strongly called as if he heard a voice from heaven.

Remarkable words these to fall from a man who, some two months later, in another letter to Dr. Johnson, modestly declared himself to be unfit to sketch out the idea of the English School for the Academy, having neither been educated himself (except as a tradesman) nor ever been concerned in educating others, he said.

Nobody would imagine [said Dr. Johnson, after reading the sketch,] that the draught you have made for an English education was done by a Tradesman. But so it sometimes is, a true genius will not content itself without entering more or less into almost everything, and of mastering many things more in spite of fate itself.

The friendship between Franklin and Jared Ingersoli is preserved in a single letter only, the one from which we have already quoted in which Franklin had his good-natured jest at the expense of the doleful New England Sunday.

All of these friends were men, but in Catherine Ray, afterwards the wife of Governor William Greene of Rhode Island, and the mother of Ray Greene, one of the early United States Senators from that State, Franklin had a friend whose sex gave a different turn of sentiment and expression to his pen. His first letter to this young woman ("Dear Katy" is the way he addresses her) was written after his return to Philadelphia from a journey to New England in 1754. She then lived on Block Island, and, when he last saw her, she was fading out of sight on the ocean on her way to that island from the mainland.

I thought too much was hazarded [he wrote], when I saw you put off to sea in that very little skiff, tossed by every wave. But the call was strong and just, a sick parent. I stood on the shore, and looked after you, till I could no longer distinguish you, even with my glass; then returned to your sister's, praying for your safe passage.

These words are followed by the paragraph already quoted, in which Franklin acknowledged the affectionate hospitality of New England and the paragraph, already quoted, too, in which he spoke of his being restored to the arms of his good old wife and children.

Persons subject to the hyp [he continued] complain of the northeast wind, as increasing their malady. But since you promised to send me kisses in that wind, and I find you as good as your word, it is to me the gayest wind that blows, and gives me the best spirits. I write this during a northeast storm of snow, the greatest we have had this winter. Your favours come mixed with the snowy fleeces, which are as pure as your virgin innocence, white as your lovely bosom, and – as cold. But let it warm towards some worthy young man, and may Heaven bless you both with every kind of happiness.

The letter concludes with these words:

I desired Miss Anna Ward to send you over a little book I left with her, for your amusement in that lonely island. My respects to your good father, and mother, and sister. Let me often hear of your welfare, since it is not likely I shall ever again have the pleasure of seeing you. Accept mine, and my wife's sincere thanks for the many civilities I receiv'd from you and your relations; and do me the justice to believe me, dear girl, your affectionate, faithful, friend, and humble servant.

This letter was dated March 4, 1755, and was in reply to one from Miss Ray which, though dated as far back as January of the same year, had just reached him.

His next letter was dated September 11, 1755, not long after he rendered his unavailing services to Braddock, and was a reply to three other letters of hers of March 3, March 30 and May 1 of that year. It begins: "Begone, business, for an hour, at least, and let me chat a little with my Katy," and apologizes for his belated reply.

Equal returns [he declares], I can never make, tho' I should write to you by every post; for the pleasure I receive from one of yours is more than you can have from two of mine. The small news, the domestic occurrences among our friends, the natural pictures you draw of persons, the sensible observations and reflections you make, and the easy, chatty manner in which you express everything, all contribute to heighten the pleasure; and the more as they remind me of those hours and miles, that we talked away so agreeably, even in a winter journey, a wrong road, and a soaking shower.

In answer to Miss Ray's inquiry about his health, he tells her that he still relishes all the pleasures of life that a temperate man can in reason desire, and, through favor, has them all in his power. In answer to her question as to whether everybody loved him yet, and why he made them do so, he replied:

I must confess (but don't you be jealous), that many more people love me now, than ever did before; for since I saw you I have been enabled to do some general services to the country, and to the army, for which both have thanked and praised me, and say they love me. They say so, as you used to do; and if I were to ask any favours of them, they would, perhaps, as readily refuse me; so that I find little real advantage in being beloved, but it pleases my humor… I long to hear, [he says in another part of the same letter] whether you have continued ever since in that monastery (Block Island); or have broke into the world again, doing pretty mischief; how the lady Wards do, and how many of them are married, or about it; what is become of Mr. B – and Mr. L – , and what the state of your heart is at this instant? But that, perhaps, I ought not to know; and, therefore, I will not conjure, as you sometimes say I do. If I could conjure, it should be to know what was that oddest question about me that ever was thought of, which you tell me a lady had just sent to ask you.

I commend your prudent resolutions, in the article of granting favours to lovers. But, if I were courting you, I could not hardly approve such conduct. I should even be malicious enough to say you were too knowing, and tell you the old story of the Girl and the Miller. I enclose you the songs you write for, and with them your Spanish letter with a translation. I honour that honest Spaniard for loving you. It showed the goodness of his taste and judgment. But you must forget him, and bless some worthy young Englishman.

Then comes the reference to his Joan (Deborah) which we have quoted in another place. She sends her respectful compliments to Miss Ray, he states; and lastly in a postscript he gives Miss Ray this caution: "As to your spelling, don't let those laughing girls put you out of conceit with it. It is the best in the world, for every letter of it stands for something."

The sincerity of this conviction he proved at least once on another occasion by himself spelling his Katy's first name with a C instead of a K.

It is to be feared that Miss Ray was a lively flirt, and it is hard to read Franklin's frequent allusions to Deborah in his letters to her without suspecting that he found it necessary at times to use his wife just a little as a shield.