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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
SELF-REVEALED
A BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDY BASED MAINLY ON HIS OWN WRITINGS
BY
WILLIAM CABELL BRUCE
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME II
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
_The Knickerbocker Press_
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917
BY
W. CABELL BRUCE
_The Knickerbocker Press, New York_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--FRANKLIN'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 1
II.--FRANKLIN AS A MAN OF BUSINESS 26
III.--FRANKLIN AS A STATESMAN 95
IV.--FRANKLIN AS A MAN OF SCIENCE 350
V.--FRANKLIN AS A WRITER 423
INDEX 531
Benjamin Franklin
Self-Revealed
CHAPTER I
Franklin's Personal Characteristics
The precise explanation of the great concourse of friends that Franklin
drew about him, at the different stages of his long journey through the
world, is to be found partly in his robust, honorable character and mental
gifts. The sterner virtues, which are necessarily the foundations of such
esteem as he enjoyed, he possessed in an eminent degree. An uncommonly
virile and resolute spirit animated the body, which was equal in youth to
the task of swimming partly on and partly under water from near Chelsea to
Blackfriars, and of exhibiting on the way all of Thevenot's motions and
positions as well as some of its own, and which shortly afterwards even
sported about the becalmed Berkshire in the Atlantic almost with the
strength and ease of one of the numerous dolphins mentioned by Franklin in
his Journal of his voyage on that ship from England to America. He hated
cruelty, injustice, rapacity and arbitrary conduct. It was no idle or
insincere compliment that Burke paid him when he spoke of his "liberal and
manly way of thinking." How stoutly his spirit met its responsibilities in
Pennsylvania, prior to the Declaration of Independence, we have seen. The
risks incident to the adoption of that declaration it incurred with the
same fearless courage. Of all the men who united in its adoption, he,
perhaps, was in the best position to know, because of his long residence in
England, and familiarity with the temper of the English monarch and his
ministry, what the personal consequences to the signers were likely to be,
if the American cause should prove unsuccessful. He had a head to lose even
harder to replace than that of his friend Lavoisier, he had a fortune to be
involved in flame or confiscation, the joy of living meant to him what it
has meant to few men, and more than one statement in his writings affords
us convincing proof that, quite apart from the collective act of all the
signers in pledging their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the "glorious
cause," he did not lose sight of the fact that the Gray Tower still stood
upon its ancient hill with its eye upon the Traitor's Gate, and its bosom
stored with instruments of savage vengeance. Indeed, it was the thought
that his son had been engaged against him in a game, in which not only his
fortune but his neck had been at stake, that made it so difficult for him,
forgiving as he was, to keep down the bile of violated nature. But, when
the time came for affixing his signature to the Declaration, he not only
did it with the equanimity of the rest, but, if tradition may be believed,
with a light-hearted intrepidity like that of Sir Walter Raleigh jesting on
the scaffold with the edge of the axe. "We must all hang together,"
declared John Hancock, when pleading for unanimity. "Yes," Franklin is said
to have replied, "we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we
shall all hang separately."
The inability of old age, partly from sheer loss of animal vigor, and
partly from the desire for peace, produced by the general decline in
vividness of everything in a world, that it is about to quit, to assert
itself with the force of will and temper, that belongs to us in our prime,
is one of the most noticeable phenomena of the later stages of human
existence. But John Adams to the contrary, the evidence all tends to show
that the resolution of character exhibited by Franklin in the heyday of his
physical strength he exhibited to the last. He was always slow to anger.
Independent of the remarkable self-control, which enabled him to preserve a
countenance, while Wedderburn was traducing him, as fixed as if it had been
carved out of wood, his anger was not kindled quickly, among other reasons
because he was too wise and just not to know that, if we could lay aside
the sensitiveness of exaggerated self-importance, there would be but little
real occasion for anger in the ordinary course of human life. But when
meanness, injustice or other aggravated forms of human depravity were to be
rebuked, the indignation of Franklin remained deliberate, judicious,
calculating and crushing to the last. One illustration of this we have
already given in his letter to Captain Peter Landais. Others we shall have
brought to our attention in several of his letters to Arthur Lee. Upon
these occasions, angry as he was, he was apt to make out his case with very
much the same cool completeness as that with which he demonstrated in a
letter to the British Post Office that it would be a mistake to shift His
Majesty's mails from the Western to the Eastern Post Route in New Jersey.
The time never came when he was not fully as militant as the occasion
required, though never more so.
And his integrity was as marked as his courage. "Splashes of Dirt thrown
upon my Character, I suffered while fresh to remain," he once said. "I did
not chuse to spread by endeavouring to remove them, but rely'd on the
vulgar Adage _that they would all rub off when they were dry_." And such
was his reputation for uprightness that, as a rule, he could neglect
attacks upon his character with impunity. The one vaunt of his life, if
such it can be called, was his statement to John Jay that no person could
truthfully declare that Benjamin Franklin had wronged him. A statement of
that kind, uttered by an even better man than Franklin, might well be
answered in the spirit that prompted Henry IV of France, when his attention
was called to a memorial inscription, which asserted that its subject never
knew fear, to remark, "Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers."
But that Franklin was a man of sterling probity is unquestionable.[1] "We
ought always to do what appears best to be done without much regarding what
others may think of it," he wrote to William Carmichael, and, at more than
one trying crisis of his career, he rose without difficulty to the
requirements of his maxim. Lord North had little love for him, but he is
credited with the remarkable statement, during the American War, that, in
his belief, Franklin was the only man in France whose hands were not
stained with stock jobbery. When the false charge was made that Franklin
had never accounted for one of the many millions of livres entrusted to him
by our French ally, no pride could suffer more acutely than did his from
its inability to disprove the charge immediately. When enemies, to whom he
had never given any just cause of offence whatever, were calumniating him
towards the close of his life, his desire to leave the reputation of an
honest man behind him became the strongest of his motives. The flattering
language of great men, he said in his _Journal of the Negotiation for Peace
with Great Britain_, did not mean so much to him when he found himself so
near the end of life as to esteem lightly all personal interests and
concerns except that of maintaining to the last, and leaving behind him the
tolerably good character that he had previously supported. Still later he
wrote to Henry Laurens, accepting the offer of that true patriot and
gentleman to refute the slanders with regard to his career in France, and
saying:
I apprehend that the violent Antipathy of a certain
person to me may have produced some Calumnies, which,
what you have seen and heard here may enable you easily
to refute. You will thereby exceedingly oblige one, who
has lived beyond all other Ambition, than that of dying
with the fair Character he has long endeavoured to
deserve.[2]
When the negotiations for peace between Great Britain and the United States
began, Richard Oswald, the envoy of Lord Shelburne, told Franklin that a
part of the confidence felt in him by the English Ministry was inspired by
his repute for open, honest dealing. This was not a mere diplomatic
_douceur_, but a just recognition of his candid, straightforward conduct in
his commerce with men. He was very resourceful and dexterous, if need were,
and, in his early life, when he was promoting his own, or the public
interests, he exhibited at times a finesse that bordered upon craftiness;
but, when Wedderburn taxed him with duplicity, he imputed to Franklin's
nature a vice incompatible with his frank, courageous disposition. It was
his outspoken sincerity of character that enabled him, during the American
War, to retain the attachment of his English friends even when he was
holding up their land as one too wicked for them to dwell in.
His intellectual traits, too, were of a nature to win social fame. In his
graphic description of Franklin in extreme old age, Doctor Manasseh Cutler,
of Massachusetts, brings him before us with these telling strokes of his
pencil:
I was highly delighted with the extensive knowledge he
appeared to have of every subject, the brightness of
his memory, and clearness and vivacity of all his
mental faculties, notwithstanding his age. His manners
are perfectly easy, and everything about him seems to
diffuse an unrestrained freedom and happiness. He has
an incessant vein of humour, accompanied with an
uncommon vivacity, which seems as natural and
involuntary as his breathing.
In other words, whatever knowledge Franklin had was readily available for
social purposes, and suffused with the gaiety and humor which are so
ingratiating, when accompanied, as they were in his case, by the desire to
please and do good.[3] "He had wit at will," is the testimony of an
unfriendly but honest witness, John Adams. His humor it would be difficult
to over-emphasize. It ranged from punning, trifling, smutty jests and horse
laughter to the sly, graceful merriment of Addison and the bitter realism
of Swift. It irradiated his conversation, his letters, his writings, his
passing memoranda, at times even his scientific essays and political
papers. "Iron is always sweet, and every way taken is wholesome and
friendly to the human Body," he states in his _Account of the New-Invented
Pennsylvanian Fireplaces_; but his waggish propensity is too much for him,
and he adds, "except in Weapons." Jefferson said that Franklin was not
allowed to draft the Declaration of Independence for fear that he would
insert a joke in it. So far as his humor assumed literary forms, we shall
speak of it in another place. We are concerned with it now only so far as
it influenced his conversation. In the _Autobiography_ he tells us that his
reputation among his fellow-printers at Watts's Printing House in London as
"a pretty good _riggite_, that is, a jocular verbal satirist," helped to
support his consequence in the society. In the same book, he also tells us
that later, wishing to break a habit that he was getting into of
prattling, punning and joking, which made him acceptable to trifling
company only, he gave Silence the second place in his little _Book of
Virtues_. "What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in
conversation?" was one of the standing questions, of his conception, which
were to be answered by the members of the Junto at each of its meetings.
And, even when he was in his eighty-third year, he could say to Elizabeth
Partridge that, notwithstanding the gout, the stone and old age, he enjoyed
many comfortable intervals, in which he forgot all his ills, and amused
himself in reading or writing, or in conversation with friends, joking,
laughing and telling merry stories, as when she first knew him a young man
about fifty. His puns at times were as flat as puns usually are, and some
of his stories could hardly have prospered in the ear that heard them, if
they had not been set off by high animal spirits and contagious good humor.
But some of those that crept into his letters, whether original or
borrowed, are good enough for repetition. He seems to have had one for
every possible combination of circumstances. "The Doctor," Miss Adams
observes, "is always silent unless he has some diverting story to tell, of
which he has a great collection." The mutinous and quarrelsome temper of
his soldiers at Gnadenhutten, when they were idle, put him in mind of the
sea-captain, who made it a rule to always keep his men at work, and who
exclaimed, upon being told by his mate, that there was nothing more to
employ them about, "_Oh, make them scour the anchor._" His
absent-mindedness, when electrocuting a turkey, in setting up an electric
circuit through his own body, which cost him the loss of his consciousness,
and a numbness in his arms and the back of his neck, which did not wear off
until the next morning, put him in mind of the blunderer who, "being about
to steal powder, made a hole in the cask with a hot iron." At times, there
was a subjective quality about his stories which lifted them above the
level of mere jests. When the suggestion was made that, in view of the
favor conferred upon America by the repeal of the Stamp Act by Parliament,
America could not, with any face of decency, refuse to defray the expense
incurred by Great Britain in stamping so much paper and parchment, Franklin
did not lack an apposite story in which a hot iron was again made to
figure.
The whole Proceeding [he said] would put one in Mind of
the Frenchman that used to accost English and other
Strangers on the Pont-Neuf, with many Compliments, and
a red hot Iron in his Hand; _Pray Monsieur Anglois_,
says he, _Do me the Favour to let me have the Honour of
thrusting this hot Iron into your Backside?_ Zoons,
what does the Fellow mean! Begone with your Iron or
I'll break your Head! _Nay Monsieur_, replies he, _if
you do not chuse it, I do not insist upon it. But at
least, you will in Justice have the Goodness to pay me
something for the heating of my Iron._
This story was too good not to have a sequel.
As you observe [he wrote to his sister Jane] there was
no swearing in the story of the poker, when I told it.
The late new dresser of it was, probably, the same, or
perhaps akin to him, who, in relating a dispute that
happened between Queen Anne and the Archbishop of
Canterbury, concerning a vacant mitre, which the Queen
was for bestowing on a person the Archbishop thought
unworthy, made both the Queen and the Archbishop swear
three or four thumping oaths in every sentence of the
discussion, and the Archbishop at last gained his
point. One present at this tale, being surprised, said,
"But did the Queen and the Archbishop swear so at one
another?" "O no, no," says the relator; "that is only
_my way_ of telling the story."
Another rather elaborate story was prompted by Franklin's disapproval of
the Society of the Cincinnati.
The States [he said in his famous letter to his
daughter] should not only restore to them the _Omnia_ of
their first Motto (omnia reliquit servare rempublicam)
which many of them have left and lost, but pay them
justly, and reward them generously. They should not be
suffered to remain, with (all) their new-created
Chivalry, _entirely_ in the Situation of the Gentleman
in the Story, which their _omnia reliquit_ reminds me
of.... He had built a very fine House, and thereby much
impair'd his Fortune. He had a Pride, however, in
showing it to his Acquaintance. One of them, after
viewing it all, remark'd a Motto over the Door
[Transcriber's note: The = represents a dash above the
O] "[=O]IA VANITAS." "What," says he, "is the Meaning
of this [=O]IA? It is a word I don't understand." "I
will tell you," said the Gentleman; "I had a mind to
have the Motto cut on a Piece of smooth Marble, but
there was not room for it between the Ornaments, to be
put in Characters large enough to be read. I therefore
made use of a Contraction antiently very common in Latin
Manuscripts, by which the _m's_ and _n's_ in Words are
omitted, and the Omissions noted by a little Dash above,
which you may see there; so that the Word is _omnia_,
OMNIA VANITAS." "O," says his Friend, "I now comprehend
the Meaning of your motto, it relates to your Edifice;
and signifies, that, if you have abridged your _Omnia_,
you have, nevertheless, left your VANITAS legible at
full length."
The determination of the enemies of America after the Revolution to have it
that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, America was going from
bad to worse, brought out still another story:
They are angry with us and hate us, and speak all
manner of evil of us; but we flourish, notwithstanding
[he wrote to his grandnephew, Jonathan Williams]. They
put me in mind of a violent High Church Factor,
resident some time in Boston, when I was a Boy. He had
bought upon Speculation a Connecticut Cargo of Onions,
which he flatter'd himself he might sell again to great
Profit, but the Price fell, and they lay upon hand. He
was heartily vex'd with his Bargain, especially when he
observ'd they began to _grow_ in the Store he had
fill'd with them. He show'd them one Day to a Friend.
"Here they are," says he, "and they are _growing_ too!
I damn 'em every day; but I think they are like the
Presbyterians; the more I curse 'em, the more they
_grow_."
It was impossible for such an irrational thing as the duel to escape
Franklin's humorous insight, and a story like the following tended far more
effectively to end the superstition upon which it throve than any pains or
penalties that law could devise:
A Man [wrote Franklin from Passy to Thomas Percival]
says something, which another tells him is a Lie. They
fight; but, whichever is killed, the Point in dispute
remains unsettled. To this purpose they have a pleasant
little Story here. A Gentleman in a Coffee-house
desired another to sit farther from him. "Why so?"
"Because, Sir, you stink." "That is an Affront, and you
must fight me." "I will fight you, if you insist upon
it; but I do not see how that will mend the Matter. For
if you kill me, I shall stink too; and if I kill you,
(you) will stink, if possible, worse than you do at
present."
This is one of those stories which make their own application, but the
grave reflections, by which it was followed, are well worthy of quotation
too.
How can such miserable Sinners as we are [added
Franklin] entertain so much Pride, as to conceit that
every Offence against our imagined Honour merits
_Death_? These petty Princes in their own Opinion would
call that Sovereign a Tyrant, who should put one of
them to death for a little uncivil Language, tho'
pointed at his sacred Person; yet every one of them
makes himself Judge in his own Cause, condemns the
offender without a Jury, and undertakes himself to be
the Executioner.
Some _bon mots_, too, of Franklin have come down to us with his stories.
When a neighbor of his in Philadelphia consulted him as to how he could
keep trespassers from coming into his back yard, and stealing small beer
from a keg, which he kept there, he replied, "Put a pipe of Madeira
alongside of it." When Lord Stormont, the British Ambassador to France,
hatched the report that a large part of Washington's army had surrendered,
Franklin was asked whether it was true. "No sir," he said, "it is not a
truth, it is only a stormont." The result was that for some time no lies
were told in Paris but only "stormonts." It was not often that the wit of
Franklin was barbed with malice, but there were good reasons why the malice
in this instance should never have cost him any regret. When the American
Commissioners proposed an exchange of prisoners to Lord Stormont, he did
not deign to reply, but when they followed up their proposition with
another letter, he returned a communication to them without date or
signature in these insolent words: "The King's Ambassador receives no
letters from rebels but when they come to implore his Majesty's mercy." The
American Commissioners, with Franklin doubtless as their scrivener, were
quite equal to the occasion. "In answer to a letter which concerns some of
the most material interests of humanity, and of the two nations, Great
Britain and the United States of America, now at war," they retorted, "we
received the inclosed _indecent_ paper, as coming from your lordship, which
we return, for your lordship's more mature consideration." Between Franklin
and the vivacity of the Parisians, Lord Stormont found it not a little
difficult to maintain his position of frigid and relentless dignity.
Commenting in a letter to John Lovell, after Lord Stormont had left France,
upon the expense entailed upon the United States by supernumerary
commissioners, Franklin takes this parting shot at the Ambassador; we
reduce such of his words as were in French to English:
I imagine every one of us spends nearly as much as Lord
Stormont did. It is true, he left behind him the
character of a niggard; and, when the advertisement
appeared for the sale of his household goods, all
Paris laughed at an article of it, perhaps very
innocently expressed, "a great quantity of table linen,
which has never been used." "That is very true," say
they, "for he has never given any one anything to
eat."[4]
Another _bon mot_ of Franklin was his reply when he was told that Howe had
taken Philadelphia. "No," he said, "Philadelphia has taken Howe"; and so it
proved. Still another owed its origin to the balloon in its infancy. "Of
what use is a balloon?" someone asked in Franklin's presence. "Of what
use," he answered, "is a new-born baby?"
But to form a correct impression of Franklin's humor we should think of it,
to use Dr. Cutler's comparison, as something as natural to him as the rise
and fall of his chest in breathing. It played like an iris over the
commonest transactions of his life. If it was only a lost prayer book of
his wife that he was advertising for in his _Gazette_, he did it in such
terms as these:
Taken out of a Pew in the Church some months since, a
Common Prayer-Book, bound in Red, gilt, and letter'd
D. F. on each corner. The Person who took it is desir'd
to open it, and read the Eighth Commandment, and
afterwards return it to the same Pew again; upon which
no further Notice will be taken.
At times, the humor is mere waggishness. When he was the Colonial Deputy
Postmaster-General, he indorsed his letters, "Free, B. Franklin," but,
after he became the Postmaster-General of the United States, out of
deference for the American struggle for liberty, he changed the indorsement
to "B. Free Franklin." Even in his brief memoranda on the backs of letters,
there are gleams of the same overflowing vivacity. Upon the manuscript of a
long poem, received by him, when in France, he jotted down the words: "From
M. de Raudiere, a poor Poet, who craves assistance to enable him to finish
an epic poem which he is writing against the English. He thinks General
Howe will be off as soon as the poem appears." When a Benedictine monk, the
prior for a time of the Abbey of St. Pierre de Chalon, lost money at cards,
and wrote to him for his aid, he made this endorsement upon the letter:
"Dom Bernard, Benedictine, wants me to pay his Gaming Debts--and he will
pray for success to our Cause!"
The humor of Franklin was too broad at times not to find expression
occasionally in practical jokes. When in England, during his maturer years,
he was in the habit of pretending to read his Parable against Persecution,
which he had learnt by heart, and in which the manner of the Old Testament
is skilfully imitated, out of his Bible, as the fifty-first Chapter of the
Book of Genesis. The remarks of the Scripturians on it, he said in a letter
written by him a year before his death, were sometimes very diverting. On
one occasion, he wrote to the famous English printer, John Baskerville,
that, to test the acumen of a connoisseur, who had asserted that
Baskerville would blind all the readers of the nation by the thin and
narrow strokes of his letters, he submitted to the inspection of the
gentleman, as a specimen of Baskerville's printing, what was in reality a
fragment of a page printed by Caslon. Franklin protested that he could not
for his life see in what respects the print merited the gentleman's
criticism. The gentleman saw in it everywhere illustrations of the justice
of this criticism and declared that he could not even then read the
specimen without pain in his eyes.
I spared him that Time [said Franklin] the Confusion of
being told, that these were the Types he had been
reading all his life, with so much Ease to his Eyes;
the Types his adored Newton is printed with, on which
he has pored not a little; nay, the very Types his own
Book is printed with, (for he is himself an Author) and
yet never discovered this painful Disproportion in
them, till he thought they were yours.[5]
Associated with these moral and intellectual traits was a total lack of all
anti-social characteristics or habits. When Franklin was in his
twenty-first year, he made this sage entry in his Journal of his voyage
from London to Philadelphia:
Man is a sociable being, and it is, for aught I know,
one of the worst of punishments to be excluded from
Society. I have read abundance of fine things on the
subject of solitude, and I know 'tis a common boast in
the mouths of those that affect to be thought wise,
_that they are never less alone than when alone_. I
acknowledge solitude an agreeable refreshment to a busy
mind; but were these thinking people obliged to be
always alone, I am apt to think they would quickly find
their very being insupportable to them.
In his youth he adopted the Socratic method of argument, and grew, he tells
us in the _Autobiography_, very artful and expert in drawing people, even
of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did
not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not
extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither he nor his
cause always deserved. But, in a few years, he discovered that these
victories were Pyrrhic victories, and he gradually left off this doubtful
kind of dialectics, retaining only the habit of expressing himself in terms
of modest diffidence, never using when he advanced anything, that might
possibly be disputed, the words "certainly," "undoubtedly" or any others
that gave the air of positiveness to an opinion, but rather saying "I
conceive" or "apprehend" a thing to be so and so; "it appears to me," or "I
should think it is so or so" for such and such reasons; or "I imagine it to
be so," or "it is so if I am not mistaken."
As the chief ends of conversation [he declared] are to
_inform_ or to be _informed_, to _please_ or to
_persuade_, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not
lessen their power of doing good by a positive,
assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to
create opposition, and to defeat every one of those
purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit,
giving or receiving information or pleasure.
And that Franklin completely succeeded in rooting out the last vestige of
dogmatism in his nature we not only have his testimony but that of
Jefferson, who was not even born when he resolved to do it. "It was one of
the rules which, above all others, made Dr. Franklin the most amiable of
men in society," he said, "never to contradict anybody." Long before this,
when Franklin was only in his forty-fifth year, James Logan wrote of him to
Peter Collinson in these words: "Our Benjamin Franklin is certainly an
extraordinary man, one of a singular good judgment, but of equal modesty."
How noble was his capacity for self-effacement in the investigation of
truth we shall see later on. In this place, it is enough to say that even
the adulation poured out upon him in France did not in the slightest degree
turn his head. He accepted it with the ingenuous pleasure with which he
accepted everything that tended to confirm his impression that life was a
game fully worth the candle, but, much as he loved France and the French,
ready as he was to take a sip of everything that Paris pronounced
exquisite, celestial or divine, it is manifest enough that he regarded with
no little amusement the effort of French hyperbole to assign to him the
role of Jupiter Tonans. When Felix Nogaret submitted to him his French
version of Turgot's epigram, "Eripuit caelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis,"
Franklin, after acknowledging the flood of compliments that he could never
hope to merit, with which the writer had overwhelmed him in his letter,
added, "I will only call your attention to two inaccuracies in the original
line. In spite of my electrical experiments, the lightning descends just
the same before my very nose and beard, and, as to tyrants, there have been
more than a million of us engaged in snatching his sceptre from him." His
pen, however, was wasting its breath when it attempted to convince a
Frenchman of that day that his countrymen did not owe their liberties
solely to him. If the French had not been too generous and well-bred to
remind him of the millions of livres obtained by him from the French King
for the support of the American cause, he might have found it more
difficult to deny that he was the real captor of Cornwallis.
How heartily Franklin hated disputation we have already had some occasion
to see. This aversion is repeatedly expressed in the _Autobiography_.
Referring to his arguments with Collins, he tells us in one place that the
disputatious turn of mind
is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often
extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction
that is necessary to bring it into practice; and
thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation,
is productive of disgusts and perhaps enmities where
you may have occasion for friendship.
In another place, he has this to say of the contentious Governor Morris,
one of the Colonial governors of Pennsylvania:
He had some reason for loving to dispute, being
eloquent, an acute sophister, and, therefore, generally
successful in argumentative conversation. He had been
brought up to it from a boy, his father, as I have
heard, accustoming his children to dispute with one
another for his diversion, while sitting at table after
dinner; but I think the practice was not wise; for, in
the course of my observation, these disputing,
contradicting, and confuting people are generally
unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory
sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be
of more use to them.
The same thought is stated in a letter from Franklin to Robert Morris in
which the former told the latter that he would see, on comparing a letter
which Franklin had written, with the answer, that, if he had replied, which
he could easily have done, a dispute might have arisen out of it, in which,
if he had got the better, he should perhaps have got nothing else.
Facetious and agreeable as he was, he was likewise free from the unsocial
habit of monopolizing conversation:
The great secret of succeeding in conversation, [he
declared], is to admire little, to hear much; always to
distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our
friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of
others appear as much as possibly we can; to hearken to
what is said, and to answer to the purpose.
Nor, in making or borrowing these just observations, was Franklin like
Carlyle who has been wittily said to have preached the doctrine of silence
in thirty volumes. What he preached in these respects, he practised.
He was friendly and agreeable in conversation [Miss
Logan tells us], which he suited to his company,
appearing to wish to benefit his hearers. I could
readily believe that he heard nothing of consequence
himself but what he turned to the account he desired,
and in his turn profited by the conversation of others.
It is hardly just to Franklin, however, to portray his social character
negatively. The truth is, as the extracts from his correspondence have
clearly enough shown, he was one of the most companionable and one of the
kindest and most sympathetic and affectionate of human beings. He detested
wrangling and discord. He had no patience with malice, and refused to allow
the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ to be made a vehicle for detraction. To tell a
chronic grumbler that he was hurt by his "voluminous complaints," or to
write to a friend that he would have sent him a longer letter but for the
coming in of a _bavard_ who had worried him till evening was about as close
as he ever got to fretfulness. There is testimony to the effect that he
never uttered a hasty or angry word to any member of his household, servant
or otherwise. Even where he had strong reasons for resentment, he was
remarkably just, generous and forgiving. Speaking in the _Autobiography_ of
the manner in which he had been deceived by Governor Keith, he had only
these mild words of reproof for him:
He wish'd to please everybody; and, having little to
give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise an
ingenious, sensible man, a pretty good writer, and a
good governor for the people, tho' not for his
constituents, the proprietaries, whose instructions he
sometimes disregarded. Several of our best laws were of
his planning and passed during his administration.
When Bradford was Postmaster, he refused to allow his post-riders to carry
any newspaper but his own. When the tables were turned, and Franklin was in
the position as Postmaster himself to shut out every publication from the
mails except his _Gazette_, he declined to retaliate on Bradford's
meanness. Drained of money, as he was by Ralph, when they were in London
together, he nevertheless summed up the situation in the _Autobiography_
with the charitable statement: "I lov'd him, notwithstanding, for he had
many amiable qualities." If there was any person for whom Franklin
entertained, and had just cause to entertain, a bitter feeling of contempt
and dislike, it was Thomas Penn. Yet, when Lady Penn solicited his
assistance, for the protection of her interests in Pennsylvania, after the
Proprietary Government in that Province had collapsed with the royal
authority, he did all that he could properly do to aid her.
He was always ready for a friendly game of cribbage, cards or chess. Though
entirely too temperate to indulge any physical appetite to excess, he was
not insensible to the pleasures of the table in his later years. Wine, too,
he relished sufficiently to thank God for it liturgically in his youth, and
to consume a second bottle of it at times in middle age with the aid of his
friend "Straney." When Col. Henry Bouquet was looking forward to a hot
summer in Charleston, he wrote to him that he did all that he could for his
relief, by recommending him to an ingenious physician of his acquaintance,
who knew the rule of making cool, weak, refreshing punch, not inferior to
the nectar of the gods. It would not do, of course, to accept too literally
the song in which Franklin exalted Bacchus at the expense of Venus, or the
Anacreontic letter to the Abbe Morellet, in which wine was extolled as if
it were all milk of our Blessed Lady. But these convivial effusions of his
pen nevertheless assist us in arriving at a correct interpretation of his
character.
He was fond of music also, and was something of a musician himself. He
could play on the harp, the guitar and the violin, and he improved the
armonica, which acquired some temporary repute. His interest in this
musical instrument owed its birth to the melodious sounds which a member of
the Royal Society, Mr. Delavel, happened to produce in his presence by
rubbing his fingers on the edges of bowls, attuned to the proper notes by
the different measures of water that they contained. It was upon the
armonica that Franklin played at the social gatherings under M. Brillon's
roof which he called his Opera, and to which such lively references are
made in the letters that passed between Madame Brillon and himself. The
advantages of the instrument, he wrote to Giambatista Beccaria, were that
its tones were incomparably sweet beyond those of any other; that they
could be swelled and softened at pleasure by stronger or weaker pressures
of the fingers, and continued to any length; and that the instrument, being
once well tuned, never again required tuning.
Blend with all this the happy disposition, which led Franklin to declare in
his eighty-second year that he comforted himself with the reflection that
only three incurable diseases, the gout, the stone, and old age, had fallen
to his share, and that they had not yet deprived him of his natural
cheerfulness, his delight in books, and enjoyment of social conversation,
and we can form some adequate idea of what he brought to intercourse with
his fellow-creatures. Only about two weeks before his death he wrote to
Jane Mecom from his death-bed:
I do not repine at my malady, though a severe one, when
I consider how well I am provided with every
convenience to palliate it, and to make me comfortable
under it; and how many more horrible evils the human
body is subject to; and what a long life of health I
have been blessed with, free from them all.
In his _Proposals Relating to Education_, he dwelt upon the importance of
"that _Benignity of Mind_, which shows itself in _searching for_ and
_seizing_ every Opportunity _to serve_ and _to oblige_; and is the
Foundation of what is called Good Breeding; highly useful to the Possessor,
and most agreeable to all." This benignity of mind belonged to him in an
eminent degree. The grape vines that he procured for his friend Quincy at
the cost of so much trouble to himself were but one of the ten thousand
proofs that he gave his friends of his undiminished affection and unselfish
readiness to serve them. Throughout his whole life, he had a way of keeping
friendship fresh by some thoughtful gift or act of kindness. Books,
pamphlets, writing materials, seeds of many descriptions, candles, hams,
American nuts and dried apples, even choice soap, were among the articles
with which he reminded his friends that he had not forgotten them.
The Box not being full [he wrote to Collinson], I have
put in a few more of our Candles which I recommend for
your particular Use when you have Occasion to read or
write by Night; they give a whiter Flame than that of
any other kind of Candle, and the Light is more like
Daylight than any other Light I know; besides they need
little or no Snuffing, and grease nothing. There is
still a little Vacancy at the End of the Box, so I'll
put in a few Cakes of American Soap made of Myrtle Wax,
said to be the best Soap in the World for Shaving or
Washing fine Linnens etc. Mrs. Franklin requests your
Daughter would be so good as to accept 3 or 4 Cakes of
it, to wash your Grandson's finest Things with.
In a letter to Bartram, who had informed him that his eye sight was
failing, Franklin surmises that this good and dear old friend did not have
spectacles that suited him.
Therefore [he said] I send you a complete set, from
number one to thirteen, that you may try them at your
ease; and, having pitched on such as suit you best at
present, reserve those of higher numbers for future
use, as your eyes grow still older; and with the lower
numbers, which are for younger people, you may oblige
some other friends. My love to good Mrs. Bartram and
your children.
Afterwards, he sends to Bartram several sorts of seed and the English medal
which had been awarded to him for his botanical achievements. And with them
went also one of the compliments in which his urbanity abounded. Alluding
to the medal, he says, "It goes in a Box to my Son Bache, with the Seeds. I
wish you Joy of it. Notwithstanding the Failure of your Eyes, you write as
distinctly as ever."
"Please to accept a little Present of Books, I send by him, curious for the
Beauty of the Impression," he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan, when Temple was on
the point of visiting England. One of his last gifts was a collection of
books to Abdiel Holmes, the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes. In addition to
the gifts that he made to his friends, and the numerous commissions that he
executed for them, when he was in London, he was prompt to let them feel
that they could always be certain of his sympathy in every respect that
affected their prosperity or happiness for good or for evil. In one of his
letters, he assures Jared Eliot that, if he should send any of his steel
saws to Philadelphia for sale, the writer would not be wanting, where his
recommendation might be of service. When at Passy, he wrote to George
Whatley for a copy of his "excellent little Work," _The Principles of
Trade_. "I would get it translated and printed here," he said. The same
generous impulse led him to write to Robert Morris, when Morris was
acquiring his reputation as "The Financier," "No one but yourself can enjoy
your growing reputation more than I do." Often as he was honored both at
home and abroad by institutions of learning, it is safe to say that no
honor that he ever received afforded him more pleasure than he experienced
when the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred at his instance by the
University of Edinburgh upon Dr. Samuel Cooper.
In no respect, however, did Franklin commend himself more signally to the
affection of his friends than in the notice that he took of their children.
His relations to some of these children were closely akin to those of
adoption. To John Hughes, Josiah Quincy, Henry Laurens and de Chaumont, he
wrote at one time or another referring to their "valuable" sons, and
filling their bosoms with the parental joy that his commendation could not
fail to excite.
In these attributes of mind, character and nature can readily be found, we
think, the explanation of that capacity for winning and retaining friends
which made the life of Franklin as mellow as a ripe peach. The most
important of them in a social sense lead us, of course, simply to the
statement that he was far more beloved than most men are because he was
himself influenced far more than most men are by the spirit of love. His
sympathy and affection were given to men in gross, and they were given to
men in detail. His heart was capacious enough to take in the largest
enterprises of human benevolence, but, unlike the hearts of many
philanthropists and reformers, it was not so intensely preoccupied with
them as to have no place for
That best portion of a good man's life,--
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of Kindness and of Love.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In his _True Benjamin Franklin_, p. 163, Sydney George Fisher makes
these statements: "In a letter written to Mrs. Stevenson in London, while
he (Franklin) was envoy to France, he expresses surprise that some of the
London tradespeople still considered him their debtor for things obtained
from them during his residence there some years before, and he asks Mrs.
Stevenson, with whom he had lodged, how his account stands with her.... He
appears to have overdrawn his account with Hall, for there is a manuscript
letter in the possession of Mr. Howard Edwards, of Philadelphia, written by
Hall, March 1, 1770, urging Franklin to pay nine hundred and ninety-three
pounds which had been due for three years." What Franklin's letter to Mrs.
Stevenson, which is dated Jan. 25, 1779, states is that he had been told
after reaching France that Mr. Henley, the linen-draper, had said that,
when the former left England for America, he had gone away in his debt. The
letter questions whether Henley ever made such a statement, asks Mrs.
Stevenson to let the writer know the meaning of it all, and adds: "I
thought he had been fully paid, and still think so, and shall, till I am
assur'd of the contrary." The account that the letter asks of Mrs.
Stevenson was probably for the shipping charges on the white cloth suit,
sword and saddle, which had been forwarded, as the letter shows, to
Franklin at Passy by Mrs. Stevenson. Or it may have well been for expense
incurred by Mrs. Stevenson in performing some similar office for him. For
instance, when he was on the point of leaving England in 1775, he wrote to
a friend on the continent that, if he had purchased a certain book for the
writer, Mrs. Stevenson, in whose hands he left his little affairs till his
return, which he proposed, God willing, in October, would pay the draft for
it.
A letter from Franklin to Mrs. Stevenson, dated July 17, 1775, shows that
there had been mutual accounts between them during his long and familiar
intercourse with her under the Craven Street roof. With this letter, he
incloses an order for a sum of money that she had intrusted to him for
investment, and also an order for L260 more, "supposing," he says, "by the
Sketch Mr. Williams made of our Accts. that I may owe you about that Sum."
"When they are finally settled," he further says, "we shall see where the
Ballance lies, and easily rectify it." If the account in question had any
connection with these accounts the unliquidated nature of the latter, the
abruptness with which Franklin was compelled to leave England in 1775,
coupled with his expectation of returning, the troubled years which
followed and the difficulty of finally settling detailed accounts, when the
parties to them are widely separated, furnish a satisfactory explanation of
the delay in settlement. If Franklin did not pay a balance claimed from him
by Hall on the settlement of their partnership accounts, after the
expiration of the partnership in 1766, it was doubtless because of his own
copyright counter-claim to which we have already referred in our text.
[2] In recent years there has been a tendency to disparage the merits of
Henry Laurens. The Hales in their _Franklin in France_ speak of him "as a
very worthy, but apparently very inefficient, member of the Commission." In
his admirable prolegomena to the _Diplomatic Correspondence of the American
Revolution_, which is well calculated to excite the regret that lawyers do
not oftener bring the professional habit of weighing evidence to bear upon
historical topics, Dr. Francis Wharton says: "The influence he exerted in
the formation of the treaty was but slight, and his attitude as to the mode
of its negotiation and as to its leading provisions so uncertain as to
deprive his course in respect to it of political weight." Dr. Wharton also
reaches the conclusion that Henry Laurens was deficient, in critical
moments, both in sagacity and resolution. On the other hand Moses Coit
Tyler in his _Literary History of the American Revolution_ declares that,
coming at last upon the arena of national politics, Laurens was soon
recognized for what he was, "a trusty, sagacious, lofty, imperturbable
character." In another place in the same work, Tyler speaks of the
"splendid sincerity, virility, wholesomeness and competence of this
man--himself the noblest Roman of them all--the unsurpassed embodiment of
the proudest, finest, wittiest, most efficient, and most chivalrous
Americanism of his time." And in still another place in the same work the
_Narrative of the Capture of Henry Laurens_ is described "as a modest and
fascinating story of an heroic episode in the history of the Revolution, a
fragment of autobiography fit to become a classic in the literature of a
people ready to pay homage to whatever is magnanimous, exquisite and
indomitable in the manly character." To anyone familiar with the whole
conduct of Laurens in the Tower and the other facts upon which Dr. Wharton
based his judgment as to his sagacity and firmness at trying conjunctures,
these statements of Tyler are to a certain extent mere academic puffery. We
see no reason, however, to shade the character that we have ascribed to
Laurens in the text. Writing to Franklin about him after his release from
the Tower, John Adams said: "I had vast pleasure in his conversation; for I
found him possessed of the most exact judgment concerning our enemies, and
of the same noble sentiments in all things which I saw in him in Congress."
And some eighteen months later Franklin wrote to Laurens himself in terms
as strong as that he should ever look on his friendship as an honor to him.
[3] The Abbe Morellet in his Memoirs gives us very much the same impression
of the social characteristics of Franklin that Cutler does. "His
conversation was exquisite--a perfect good nature, a simplicity of manners,
an uprightness of mind that made itself felt in the smallest things, an
extreme gentleness, and, above all, a sweet serenity that easily became
gayety." But this was Franklin when he was certain of his company. "He
conversed only with individuals," John Adams tells us, "and freely only
with confidential friends. In company he was totally silent." If we may
judge by the few specimens reserved by the Diary of Arthur Lee, the Diary
of John Baynes, an English barrister, and Hector St. John, the author of
_Letters from an American Farmer_, the grave talk of Franklin was as good
as his conversation in its livelier moods. After a call with Baynes upon
Franklin at Passy, Sir Samuel Romilly wrote in his Journal: "Of all the
celebrated persons whom in my life I have chanced to see, Dr. Franklin,
both from his appearance and his conversation, seemed to me the most
remarkable. His venerable patriarchal appearance, the simplicity of his
manner and language, and the novelty of his observations, at least the
novelty of them at that time to me, impressed me with an opinion of him as
one of the most extraordinary men that ever existed."
[4] The lack of generous fare imputed by the Parisians to the table of Lord
Stormont was in keeping with the hopelessly rigid and bigoted nature
revealed by his dispatches when in France. Writing from Paris on Dec. 11,
1776, to Lord Weymouth, he says of Franklin: "Some people think that either
some private dissatisfaction or despair of success have brought him into
this country. I can not but suspect that he comes charged with a secret
commission from the Congress, and as he is a subtle, artful man, and void
of all truth, he will in that case use every means to deceive, will avail
himself of the general ignorance of the French, to paint the situation of
the rebels in the falsest colours, and hold out every lure to the
ministers, to draw them into an open support of that cause. He has the
advantage of several intimate connexions here, and stands high in the
general opinion. In a word, my Lord, I look upon him as a dangerous engine,
and am very sorry that some English frigate did not meet with him by the
way." In another letter to Lord Weymouth, dated Apr. 16, 1777, Lord
Stormont declared that he was thoroughly convinced that few men had done
more than Franklin to poison the minds of the Americans, or were more
totally unworthy of his Majesty's mercy.
[5] It was Balzac who said that the _canard_ was a discovery of
Franklin--the inventor of the lightning rod, the hoax, and the republic.