eminently unsatisfactory as the other. The first was to quit printing
and publishing. The second was to submit to the censorship. James
hit upon a more ingenious solution. He turned the _Courant_ over to
sixteen-year-old Benjamin. Benjamin's indentures as apprentice to
James had five years to run, and in order to forestall any objection
on the part of the authorities that an apprentice was not competent to
manage the paper, the indentures were ostentatiously canceled and a
new document drawn up as a private and confidential (but none the less
binding) memorandum which in theory was no one's affair save James's
and Benjamin's. The half-sheet issue of the _Courant_ for February
4-11, 1723, identified it as "printed and sold by Benjamin Franklin in
Queen Street, where Advertisements are taken in." Benjamin Franklin's
name thus first appeared in an imprint. It remained on the tail-board
of the _Courant_ until the paper's discontinuance in 1726, long after
Benjamin had left Boston.
The gratifying tableau of two stalwart brothers battling loyally side
by side for freedom of the press, however, was not the whole picture.
James and Benjamin had differences, and Benjamin later admitted
that he himself was "perhaps ... too saucy and provoking," and that
James, despite "the blows his passion too often urged him to bestow
upon me," was "otherwise not an ill-natur'd man." Benjamin, at all
events, decided to take advantage of the freedom accorded him by the
cancellation of his indentures, which act he later conceded to have
been "not fair" and "one of the first errata of my life." James spread
the tidings of this perfidy throughout Boston, and every local printing
establishment thereupon became a closed shop to Benjamin Franklin.
If James assumed that Benjamin would thus be forced to return to his
own shop, he reckoned without his Benjamin. For not long thereafter,
with the connivance of a friend, John Collins, Benjamin was smuggled
aboard a New York-bound sloop, and three days later, thanks to a fair
wind, he was in a city which was not yet a metropolis judged even
by easy colonial standards. He called on "old Mr. William Bradford"
(aged sixty), who had nothing to offer, but who suggested that his son
Andrew, then flourishing (after a fashion) in Philadelphia, might have
a position for him, since Andrew's "principal hand," Aquila Rose, had
just died.
Franklin set out by water by way of Perth Amboy. It is interesting to
note, in view of the dispute regarding the earliest New Jersey imprint
... that the trip from New York to the New Jersey port took thirty
hours. All in good time he reached Philadelphia.
Washington did not cut down a cherry tree and then inform his father
that he could not tell a lie; Wellington did not say "Up, Guards, and
at 'em!" or Pershing, "Lafayette, we are here." The dear old legends
explode all about us; it is gratifying to recall that there is one at
least the accuracy of which is unimpeachable. Walking up Market Street,
Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin did pass the home of his wife-to-be
with a roll under each arm and munching a third, and his wife-to-be did
see him and note that he made "a most awkward, ridiculous appearance."
Andrew Bradford had nothing to offer--the vacancy left by the death of
Aquila Rose had already been filled. But Franklin was not yet done with
the ghostly trail of Aquila. At Andrew Bradford's suggestion he waited
on Samuel Keimer, who had recently set up as a printer despite a meager
endowment of equipment, native ability, or acquired skill. He found
Keimer "composing an Elegy on Aquila Rose" directly from the type.
So there being no copy (recorded Franklin), but one pair of cases,
and the Elegy likely to require all the letters, no one could help
him. I endeavor'd to put his press (which he had not yet us'd, and of
which he understood nothing) into order fit to be work'd with; and,
promising to come and print off his Elegy as soon as he should have
got it ready, I return'd to Bradford's, who gave me a little job to
do for the present, and there I lodged and dieted. A few days after,
Keimer sent for me to print off the Elegy. And now he had got another
pair of cases, and a pamphlet to reprint, on which he set me to work.
This broadside poem, therefore, was the first piece of Philadelphia
printing with which Franklin's name is clearly identified. The
"pamphlet to reprint" may have been _A Letter to a Friend in Ireland_,
_The Doctrine of Absolute Reprobation Refuted_, _A Letter from One
in the Country to His Friend in the City_, _A Parable_, or (and this
would certainly have been Franklin's choice) _The Curiosities of
Common Water_, all of which Keimer imprints of 1723 are listed in the
short-title check list which follows the Curtis catalogue. No more
specifically is it possible to identify the "little job" which Andrew
Bradford gave him.
It is not likely that Franklin would have long continued with Keimer
(who was "an odd fish; ignorant of common life, fond of rudely opposing
receiv'd opinions, slovenly to extream dirtiness, enthusiastic in some
points of religion, and a little knavish withal") even if a roundabout
coincidence had not brought him to the attention o£ the governor of
the province, Sir William Keith, whose quarrel with William Bradford
had been one of the impulses that had established the latter as New
York's first printer. Keimer "star'd like a pig poison'd" one day when
no less a worthy than Sir William entered the shop in search of the new
assistant from Boston. Governor and assistant adjourned to a tavern,
where the former disclosed a grandiose idea for setting the newcomer
up in a shop of his own. He must first, of course, go to London to
buy equipment, and to this end the governor loaded him down with
enthusiasm and letters of credit. After a short visit to Boston, where
all "made me welcome, except my brother," who "receiv'd me not very
frankly, look'd me all over, and turn'd to his work again", Franklin
sailed for London, which he reached the day before Christmas, 1724--to
learn, to his intense mortification, that Sir William's letters of
credit were worthless, since that gentleman's prowess as a promiser and
his shortcomings as a performer were rather more familiar in the old
country than in the new.
Franklin, however, had little difficulty in extricating himself from
the crisis into which he was precipitated on his arrival in London
by the non-negotiability of Sir William Keith's commercial paper.
"I immediately got into work at Palmer's," he says, "then a famous
printing house in Bartholomew Close, and here I continu'd near a year."
Samuel Palmer, declares John Clyde Oswald in _Benjamin Franklin,
Printer_ (New York, 1917), "was more than an ordinary printer. He had
visited America, was letter-founder as well as printer, and was engaged
in the writing of 'A History of Printing,' only a third of which he had
completed when he died in 1732."
Franklin identifies only one of the jobs on which he worked at
Palmer's. "I was employed," continues the _Autobiography_, "in
composing for the second edition of Wollaston's _Religion of Nature_."
The name of William Wollaston (1659-1724) now survives mainly by virtue
of this adventitious association with a nineteen-year-old immigrant
compositor. _The Religion of Nature Delineated_ first appeared in 1722
in a small privately printed edition. Presumably this first edition
is now rare, but no collector is impressed thereby, preferring above
it that on which Franklin worked (the third in strict sequence, but
the second published edition), which, happily, is relatively common.
It bears the imprint: "London: Printed by S. Palmer, and sold by
B. Lintott, W. and J. Innys, J. Osborn, J. Batley, and T. Longman.
1725." The printer from America pondered over the copy as he set it,
and out of his ruminations came a pamphlet reply to the recently
deceased author: _A Dissertation on Liberty And Necessity, Pleasure
and Pain_ (London, 1725). Franklin printed one hundred copies, gave a
few to friends, and then, repenting of his materialistic agnosticism,
"burnt the rest except one copy"; pride of authorship would not wholly
down. That copy may be one of the four known to survive today, all in
institutional collections.
Receiving a better offer from John Watts, who conducted a larger
printing establishment, Franklin went thither, remaining six months,
when he accepted the proposal of a Philadelphia merchant then in London
that he return and act "as his clerk, keep his books, in which he
would instruct me, copy his letters, and attend the store." In leaving
London, therefore, Franklin supposed that he thereby "took leave of
printing forever."
Man proposes. Franklin and his new employer reached Philadelphia; the
store was duly opened and its new clerk installed; four months later
the employer died. The establishment was taken over by the executors
and Franklin was out of work. Keimer wanted him back as foreman of his
new and larger shop, but Franklin, who knew well his Keimer, first
sought a place at his new trade of clerk and salesman. Nothing offered,
so he reluctantly accepted Keimer's bid. The affiliation did not last
long. Franklin and Keimer quarreled over "a trifle" that represented
the culmination of a long series of abuses:
A great noise happening near the courthouse, I put my head out of the
window to see what was the matter. Keimer, being in the street, look'd
up and saw me, call'd out to me in a loud voice and angry tone to mind
my business, adding some reproachful words, that nettled me the more
for their publicity, all the neighbors who were looking out on the
same occasion, being witness how I was treated. He came up immediately
into the printing-house, continu'd the quarrel, high words pass'd
on both sides, he gave me the quarter's warning we had stipulated,
expressing a wish that he had not been oblig'd to so long a warning.
I told him that his wish was unnecessary, for I would leave him that
instant; and so, taking my hat, walk'd out of doors.
Had affairs not fallen out thus ludicrously, then some other incident
would have "snapt our connections." If no "great noise" had occurred
near the courthouse (what, one wonders, was the cause of the
disturbance?), there would still have been a subsequent great noise
in Keimer's shop, and the hireling would have spoken his piece to the
overlord and walked out of the identical door to the fulfillment of his
high destiny.
Franklin was of more than half a mind to return to Boston, in which
event Philadelphia would one day have been compelled to seek another
patron saint. Fortunately for Philadelphia, while working at Keimer's,
Franklin had struck up a friendship with Hugh Meredith, a fellow
craftsman, who suggested a partnership. A secret agreement was drawn
up, and pending the completion of arrangements for launching the
venture, Franklin sought temporary work at Bradford's. Keimer meanwhile
was negotiating with the provincial government of New Jersey for the
printing of an issue of paper money at Burlington, and urged Franklin
to accompany him if he was awarded the job. The plan went through, and
the pair were in Burlington three months. "There is not a single piece
of this paper money known to exist today," says Dr. Campbell, "and of
the New Jersey Laws that they printed at the same time there are only
two known copies...."
In the summer of 1728 the new firm of B. Franklin and H. Meredith came
into existence. They had scarce "opened our letters" (their cases, that
is, not the morning mail) when a friend "brought a countryman to us,
whom he had met in the street inquiring for a printer." The identity
of this bucolic, casual, but superlatively important patron of the
typographic arts is unknown and probably forever unknowable, for he
could hardly have been aware that he was the instrument of Providence
chosen to motivate the first imprint issued by Franklin as a master
printer. Dr. Campbell surmised the job was "probably stationery or a
small handbill." Whatever it was, it has probably vanished beyond hope
of recall, or at least beyond hope of positive identification.
Almost on the heels of this first customer came another--none other
than Samuel Keimer, whose general ineffectualness and chronic state
of panic provide much of the comic relief in the history of early
American printing. Keimer had been working off and on for three years
on William Sewell's _History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the
Christian People Called Quakers: The Third Edition, Corrected_. The end
was not in sight, and Keimer, evidently in a condition of acute mental
distress, rushed to the new shop for assistance. Franklin and Meredith
composed and printed "forty sheets," totaling nearly a third of the
seven hundred pages--the first known job to issue from their shop, even
though it did not bear their imprint. Sewell's _History_ is doubly a
Franklin item, as Franklin must have worked on the book while he was
still in Keimer's employ.
Thanks to the diligence of its proprietors--or of one of them, for
Meredith "was often seen drunk in the streets, and playing at low games
in alehouses"--the new shop prospered. But about the middle of 1730 it
encountered a hazard which its sponsors had not foreseen. Meredith's
father had advanced one hundred pounds to put the enterprise on its
feet and had promised another hundred. When the time came for him to
meet his obligation, he could not, and "the New Printing-Office near
the Market" was faced with a creditor's suit. This crisis confirmed
young Meredith's conviction that he was not cut out for the printing
business; moreover, he was anxious to join a company of fellow Welshmen
who were planning a settlement in North Carolina. Two of Franklin's
friends offered to come to the aid of the senior partner, and the
difficulty was amicably adjusted. Thus was the "B. Franklin" imprint
born. It appeared for the first time not on anything in English, but at
the bottom of the title-page of _Mystische und Sehr Geheyme Sprueche_,
by Conrad Beissel, whose religio-communistic Ephrata colony, itself to
become one day an important printing center, had been organized only a
few years before.
Shortly before the dissolution of the firm of Franklin and Meredith
there had been another odd run-in with Keimer. Franklin was already
planning a newspaper, and "foolishly" imparted the secret to a friend
who forthwith made it known to Keimer. Toward the end of 1728 the
not-to-be-anticipated Keimer issued the first number of _The Universal
Instructor in all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette_. It was
Keimer's inescapable genius to start what he could not finish, and he
was soon glad to dispose of the paper to Franklin and Meredith, whose
control dates from October 2, 1729. One of Franklin's first acts as a
newspaper publisher--his memory must have harked back to the old Boston
days--was to shorten the too comprehensive title to _The Pennsylvania
Gazette_.
Probably some three months after the departure of Meredith, Franklin
initiated a new partnership. He married. "Partnership" is no romantic
figure of speech. The name of Deborah Read has an honored place on
the roster of women who helped to make American printing. By her
husband's own testimony, her share in the work of the establishment
included, in some measure, the "folding and stitching" of pamphlets,
and it is not unlikely that her hands had a busy share in the
preparation of some of the series of pamphlets with which, more
than with any other, Franklin's name is most clearly associated as
author-printer-publisher--the _Poor Richard_ almanacs.
The importance of the almanac in the colonial scheme has already
been stressed. Franklin was naturally alert to this importance; in
fact, as soon as the house of Franklin and Meredith was in existence
he had commissioned Thomas Godfrey to compile an almanac. Godfrey was
"a self-taught mathematician, great in his way," but "he knew little
out of his way," and there was considerable of the prima donna in his
make-up. He prepared almanacs for 1730, 1731, and 1732, and then, in
an outburst of temperament, transferred his skill to the shelter of
Andrew Bradford. The fortunate result, certainly not anticipated by
Thomas Godfrey in his dudgeon, was, as Paul Leicester Ford defines it,
the birth of American humor. Franklin initiated the _Poor Richard_
series, compiling the bulk of the contents himself, but attributing
their authorship to Richard Saunder or Saunders, whose almanacs
had enjoyed enormous popularity in England and were still enjoying
it, though Saunders had been gone this many a year. A _Poor Robin_
series of almanacs was also popular in England, and James Franklin a
few years earlier had begun a series of Rhode Island almanacs under
this title. _Poor Richard_ was an immediate success, and though the
first number was not advertised in _The Pennsylvania Gazette_ until
December 19, 1732, which was rather late in the year for a new almanac,
three printings were necessary to supply the demand. _Poor Richard_
thereafter issued regularly every December under Franklin's own
editorship until 1757 (for 1758).
_Poor Richard's_ rich wisdom has become part of common speech wherever
English or any other language is spoken. Everyone from China to Peru
knows that God helps those that help themselves, that three removes are
as bad as a fire, that
_Vessels large may venture more,
But little boats should keep near shore._
A recent commentator--Carl L. Becker in the _Dictionary of American
Biography_--says of the _Poor Richard_ almanacs:
Nothing better exhibits the man, or better illustrates his ingenuity
as an advertiser.... "Richard Saunders," the Philomath of the
_Almanack_, was the Sir Roger de Coverley of the masses, pilfering the
world's store of aphorisms, and adapting them to the circumstances and
the understanding of the poor. "Necessity never made a good bargain."
"It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." "Many dishes make
diseases." "The used key is always bright." The _Almanack_ was
immediately successful and commonly sold about ten thousand copies.
"As Poor Richard says" became a current phrase, used to give weight to
any counsel of thrift. The work made Franklin's name a household word
throughout the colonies.... The introduction to the last _Almanack_
(Father Abraham's speech at the auction) spread the fame of Poor
Richard in Europe. It was printed in broadsides and posted on walls in
England, and, in translation, distributed by the French clergy among
their parishioners. It has been translated into fifteen languages, and
reprinted at least four hundred times.
Franklin's rise to the position of the most important printer in the
colonies after the well-entrenched Bradfords was now rapid. Before long
he was official printer to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Of
the bulk of his non-governmental productions, Ford writes that while
generally "of little moment," still "there can be no doubt that as
a whole they contain more of genuine merit than those of any other
printer of the same or previous periods in the colonies, the amount
of doctrinal and polemical theology being a minimum, and bearing a
less proportion to the whole mass than can be found in the books of
contemporary American printers." In 1735 appeared over Franklin's
imprint James Logan's _Cato's Moral Distichs Englished in Couplets_.
Nine years later Franklin sponsored Samuel Richardson's _Pamela_--not
only the first American edition, but the first novel to be printed
in America, "Price 6 s." In the same year, 1744, he issued what is
generally regarded as the typographical masterpiece of his press, _M.
T. Cicero's Cato Major, or His Discourse of Old-Age: With Explanatory
Notes_ (also Englished by James Logan), referring to it in a four-page
foreword of his own composition as "this first Translation of a Classic
in this Western World." This was a wide error, for George Sandys had
translated Ovid on the banks of the James River a life-span earlier,
and the translation had been printed in London in 1626; moreover,
Franklin forgot those _Moral Distichs_ of Cato and James Logan which he
himself had issued in 1735.
In 1748, Franklin formed a partnership with an alert young Scotchman
whom he had engaged five years before, and the "Franklin and Hall"
imprint thereupon replaced (with a few exceptions) the familiar "B.
Franklin." A few earlier connections must be mentioned. Franklin's name
is found on several German titles in combination with that of Gotthard
Armbruester and with that of Johannes Böhm, and, apparently once only,
with that of Johannes Wüster, but these seem to have been purely
partnerships of convenience, and suggest no such dual affiliations as
those with Meredith and Hall. The Hall partnership lasted eighteen
years, and during that period Franklin's connection with printing
and publishing became less and less important as the crisis in
international affairs that was bringing on the American Revolution
grew more and more acute. But the printer in him could not wholly be
suppressed. When he went to Paris in 1776 as representative of the
colonies, he established a little press for his own amusement at his
home in Passy, then a suburb, now as much a part of the metropolis as
Greenwich Village is of New York. It was not quite such a toy as Robert
Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne were one day to set up
in Switzerland, the main difference being that the Stevenson-Osbourne
combination knew nothing about printing and was joyously aware of it,
whereas Franklin, with just as joyous awareness, knew as much about it
as any man of his time. One factor the two private presses of Passy
and Davos-Platz have in common--their productions are excessively rare
and costly collector's playthings. The story of the French venture
is authoritatively set forth in Luther S. Livingston's _Franklin and
His Press at Passy_, issued by the Grolier Club of New York in 1914.
Livingston listed thirty-two entries, and since his monograph was
published six others have come to light, according to Will Ransom's
_Private Presses and Their Books_ (New York, 1929).
The output of Franklin's press from 1729 to the termination of the Hall
partnership (1766) is statistically impressive. The following summary
is tabulated from the short-title check list of all Franklin imprints
known in 1918 which Dr. Campbell appended to the Curtis catalogue
(excluding _The Pennsylvania Gazette_ and the numerous issues of paper
currency printed by Franklin from 1731 to 1764):
1729 8 1748 30
1730 15 1749 33
1731 8 1750 19
1732 15 1751 24
1733 14 1752 18
1734 15 1753 16
1735 20 1754 15
1736 8 1755 27
1737 13 1756 26
1738 9 1757 31
1739 12 1758 13
1740 46 1759 16
1741 45 1760 10
1742 31 1761 12
1743 25 1762 8
1744 25 1763 15
1745 15 1764 18
1746 23 1765 19
1747 27 1766 4
Any book, pamphlet, broadside, or periodical that bears a Franklin
imprint, alone or in combination, is worth treasuring on that account
alone. In general, the scale of desirability is set by scarcity, this
scale one might suppose, should follow the line of chronology with
reasonable accuracy, but it happens that it does not. The Sewell
_History_, for instance, ought by chronological measurement to be an
excessively rare book as the first book on which Franklin worked as an
independent printer, and rare it assuredly is, but by no means to the
point of utter elusiveness.
Twelve years later the total of Franklin imprints was moving toward two
hundred--and in that twelfth year, 1740, there issued from his press
the second edition of David Evan's _A Short, Plain Help for Parents
and Heads of Families, to Feed Their Babes with the Sincere Milk of
God's Word. Being a Short, Plain Catechism, Grounded Upon God's Word,
and Agreeable to the Westminster Assembly's Excellent Catechism._ No
copy of the first edition is known to be extant--Dr. Campbell quoted
the title imperfectly from a contemporary advertisement--and neither
Hildeburn nor Campbell knew that a second edition had ever been issued.
Neither did anyone else until 1929, when a copy came to light and won
its way to a New York book-seller's catalogue. The book is mentioned
here, not because it possesses great intrinsic importance (it would be
of trivial note if a hundred or two copies of it survived), but as an
indication of the fact that unrecorded Franklin imprints are likely
to appear at any time, and as indication, further, that the scarcity
of Franklin imprints does not altogether parallel the dates of his
activity as printer and publisher.