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

On the other hand there is much to support the idea that the motive at the back of Franklin's letters to Madame Brillon was very much the same as that which inspired the Journey to the Elysian Fields and the Ephemera. They were to a great extent, at any rate, mere literary bagatelles as those performances were – the offerings of an opulent wit and fancy at the shrine of beauty and fashion, which to be successful in an academic sense had to be informed by the spirit, and attuned to the note, of the time and place. All the same, the letters from Franklin to Madame Brillon are painful reading. Like not a little else in his life, they tend to confirm the impression that upright, courageous, public-spirited, benevolent, loving and faithful in friendship as he was, on the sensual side of his nature he was lamentably callous to the moral laws and conventions and the personal and social refinements which legitimize and dignify the physical intercourse of the sexes. The pinchbeck glitter, the deceitful vacuity of his moral regimen and Art of Virtue, assume an additional meaning, when we see him mumbling the cheek of Madame Brillon, and month after month and year after year writing to her in strains of natural or affected concupiscence. It was things of this sort which have assisted in strengthening the feeling, not uncommon, that Franklin's Art of Virtue was a purely counterfeit thing, and the moralist himself an untrustworthy guide to righteous conduct.

In a letter to M. de Veillard, Franklin after his return to America from France referred to the Brillon family as "that beloved family." Restored to his home surroundings, he forgot his French lines, and was again as soberly American as ever in thought and speech. Who would recognize the lover of Madame Brillon in this russet picture that he paints of himself in his eighty-third year in a letter to her?

You have given me Pleasure by informing me of the Welfare and present agreable Circumstances of yourself and Children; and I am persuaded that your Friendship for me will render a similar Account of my Situation pleasing to you. I am in a Country where I have the happiness of being universally respected and beloved, of which three successive annual Elections to the Chief Magistracy, in which Elections the Representatives of the People in Assembly and the Supreme Court join'd and were unanimous, is the strongest Proof; this is a Place of Profit as well as of Honour; and my Friends chearfully assist in making the Business as easy to me as possible.

After a word more with regard to the dwelling and the dutiful family, so often mentioned in his twilight letters, he concludes in this manner:

My Rents and Incomes are amply sufficient for all my present Occasions; and if no unexpected Misfortunes happen during the time I have to live, I shall leave a handsome Estate to be divided among my Relatives. As to my Health, it continues the same, or rather better than when I left Passy; but being now in my 83rd year, I do not expect to continue much longer a Sojourner in this world, and begin to promise myself much Gratification of my Curiosity in soon visiting some other.

In this letter, Franklin was looking forward, we hardly need say, to a very different world from the one where Madame Brillon was to be the second Mrs. Franklin, and they were to eat together apples of Paradise roasted with butter and nutmeg. And it is only just to the memory of Madame Brillon to recall the genuine words, so unlike the tenor of her former letters to Franklin, in which she bade him farewell, when he was leaving the shores of France:

I had so full a heart yesterday in leaving you that I feared for you and myself a grief-stricken moment which could only add to the pain which our separation causes me, without proving to you further the tender and unalterable affection that I have vowed to you for always. Every day of my life I shall recall that a great man, a sage, was willing to be my friend; my wishes will follow him everywhere; my heart will regret him incessantly; incessantly I shall say I passed eight years with Doctor Franklin; they have flown, and I shall see him no more! Nothing in the world could console me for this loss, except the thought of the peace and happiness that you are about to find in the bosom of your family.

It was to the Comtesse d'Houdetot of Rousseau's Confessions, however, that Franklin was indebted for his social apotheosis in France. In a letter to her after his return to America, he calls her "ma chere & toujours – amiable Amie," and declares that the memory of her friendship and of the happy hours that he had passed in her sweet society at Sanois, had often caused him to regret the distance which made it impossible for them to ever meet again. In her letters to him, after his return to America, she seeks in such words as "homage," "veneration" and "religious tenderness" to express the feelings with which he had inspired her. In these letters, there are also references to the fête champêtre which she gave in his honor at her country seat at Sanois on the 12th day of April, in the year 1781, and which was one of the celebrated events of the time. When it was announced that Franklin's carriage was approaching the château, the Countess and a distinguished retinue of her relations set out on foot to meet him. At a distance of about half a mile from the château, they came upon him, and gathered around the doors of his carriage, and escorted it to the grounds of the château, where the Countess herself assisted Franklin to alight. "The venerable sage," said a contemporary account, "with his gray hairs flowing down upon his shoulders, his staff in his hand, the spectacles of wisdom on his nose, was the perfect picture of true philosophy and virtue." As soon as Franklin had descended from the carriage, the whole company grouped themselves around him, and the Countess declaimed, with proper emphasis we may be sure, these lines:

"Soul of heroes and wise men,
Oh, Liberty! First boon of the Gods!
Alas! It is too remotely that we pay thee our vows;
It is only with sighs that we render homage
To the man who made happy his fellow-citizens."

All then wended their way through the gardens of the Countess to the château, where they were soon seated at a noble feast. With the first glass of wine, a soft air was played, and the Countess and her relations rose to their feet, and sang in chorus these lines, which they repeated in chorus after every succeeding glass of wine:

"Of Benjamin let us celebrate the renown,
Let us sing the good that he has done to mortals;
In America he will have altars,
And at Sanois we drink to his fame."

When the time for the second glass of wine came, the Countess sang this quatrain:

"He gives back to human nature its rights,
To free it he would first enlighten it,
And virtue to make itself adored,
Assumed the form of Benjamin."

And at the third glass, the Vicomte d'Houdetot sang these words:

"William Tell was brave but savage,
More highly our dear Benjamin I prize,
While shaping the destiny of America,
At meat he laughs just as does your true sage."

And at the fourth glass, the Vicomtesse d'Houdetot sang these words:

"I say, live Philadelphia, too!
Freedom has its allurement for me;
In that country, I would gladly dwell,
Though neither ball nor comedy is there."

And at the fifth glass, Madame de Pernan sang these words:

"All our children shall learn of their mothers,
To love, to trust, and to bless you;
You teach that which may reunite
All the sons of men in the arms of one father."

And at the sixth glass, the aged Comte de Tressan sang these words:

"Live Sanois! 'Tis my Philadelphia.
When I see here its dear law-giver;
I grow young again in the heart of delight,
And I laugh, and I drink and list to Sophie."

And at the seventh glass, the Comte d'Apché sang these lines, in which some violence was done to the facts of English History, and the French Revolution was foreshadowed:

"To uphold that sacred charter
Which Edward accorded to the English,
I feel that there is no French Knight
Who does not desire to use his sword."

And so quatrain preceded glass and chorus followed quatrain until every member of the eulogistic company had sung his or her song. The banqueters then rose from the table, and the Countess, followed by her relations, conducted Franklin to an arbor in her gardens, where he was presented with a Virginia locust by her gardener, which he was asked to honor the family by planting with his own hands. When he had done so, the Countess declaimed some additional lines, which were afterwards inscribed upon a marble pillar, erected near the tree:

"Sacred tree, lasting monument
Of the sojourn deigned to be made here by a sage,
Of these gardens henceforth the pride,
Receive here the just homage
Of our vows and of our incense;
And may you for all the ages,
Forever respected by time,
Live as long as his name, his laws and his deeds."

On their way back to the château, the concourse was met by a band which played an accompaniment, while the Countess and her kinsfolk sang this song:

"May this tree, planted by his benevolent hand,
Lifting up its new-born trunk,
Above the sterile elm,
By its odoriferous flower,
Make fragrant all this happy hamlet.
The lightning will lack power to strike it,
And will respect its summit and its branches,
'Twas Franklin who, by his prosperous labors,
Taught us to direct or to extinguish that,
While he was destroying other evils,
Still more for the earth's sake to be pitied."

This over, all returned to the château where they were engaged for some time in agreeable conversation. In the late afternoon, Franklin was conducted by the Countess and the rest to his carriage, and, when he was seated, they gathered about the open door of the vehicle, and the Countess addressed her departing guest in these words:

"Legislator of one world, and benefactor of two!