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The True Benjamin Franklin
[Illustration: THE DUPLESSIS PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN]
The True
Benjamin Franklin
By
Sydney George Fisher
Author of "Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial
Times," "The Making of Pennsylvania," "The
Evolution of the Constitution," etc.
"If rigid moral analysis be not the purpose of
historical writing, there is no more value in
it than in the fictions of mythological
antiquity."--CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, SR.
FIFTH EDITION
WITH AN APPENDIX
Philadelphia
J. B. Lippincott Company
1903
COPYRIGHT, 1898
BY
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Preface to the Third Edition
Since the appearance of the first edition there has been some discussion
of the question whether Mrs. Foxcroft was really Franklin's daughter. In
the present edition I have added an appendix going fully into this
question.
Franklin's plain language about love and marriage and his very frank
descriptions of his own shortcomings in these matters seem to have
surprised many people. I might have explained this more fully in the
first edition, but to any one who knows the age in which Franklin lived
there is nothing that need cause surprise.
It was an age of frank autobiographies and plain, detailed,
introspective statements about love affairs. Rousseau flourished in
those days, also Gozzi and Madame Roland; and Casanova began writing his
most extraordinary memoirs just about the time of Franklin's death.
Anyone who is at all familiar with these authors will readily understand
why Franklin wrote his "Advice on the Choice of a Mistress." His "Speech
of Polly Baker" was of the same sort. It had a most extraordinary
circulation because people were then looking at these matters from that
point of view. The philosophic thought of that age was somewhat
inclining to the opinion, since then much developed by German theorists
like Nietzche, that religion had made love impure. Franklin, as at page
106, was also inclining that way.
Such things must be mentioned and given their proper position and
importance in a book calling itself "The True Benjamin Franklin." There
are many books describing the false Franklin, the impossible Franklin,
the Franklin that never existed, and could not in the nature of things
exist, and to these books those who do not like the truth are referred.
Preface
This analysis of the life and character of Franklin has in view a
similar object to that of the volume entitled "The True George
Washington," which was prepared for the publishers by Mr. Paul Leicester
Ford and issued a year or two ago.
Washington sadly needed to be humanized, to be rescued from the
myth-making process which had been destroying all that was lovable in
his character and turning him into a mere bundle of abstract qualities
which it was piously supposed would be wholesome examples for the
American people. This assumption that our people are children who must
not be told the eternal truths of human nature, but deceived into
goodness by wooden heroes and lay figures, seems, fortunately, to be
passing away, and in a few years it will be a strange phase to look back
upon.
So thorough and systematic has been the expurgating during the last
century that some of its details are very curious. It is astonishing how
easily an otherwise respectable editor or biographer can get himself
into a state of complete intellectual dishonesty. It is interesting to
follow one of these literary criminals and see the minute care with
which he manufactures an entirely new and imaginary being out of the
real man who has been placed in his hands. He will not allow his victim
to say even a single word which he considers unbecoming. The story is
told that Washington wrote in one of his letters that a certain movement
of the enemy would not amount to a flea-bite; but one of his editors
struck out the passage as unfit to be printed. He thought, I suppose,
that Washington could not take care of his own dignity.
Franklin in his Autobiography tells us that when working as a journeyman
printer in London he drank nothing but water, and his fellow-workmen, in
consequence, called him the "Water-American;" but Weems in his version
of the Autobiography makes him say that they called him the "American
Aquatic," an expression which the vile taste of that time was pleased to
consider elegant diction. In the same way Temple Franklin made
alterations in his grandfather's writings, changing their vigorous
Anglo-Saxon into stilted Latin phrases.
It is curious that American myth-making is so unlike the ancient
myth-making which as time went on made its gods and goddesses more and
more human with mortal loves and passions. Our process is just the
reverse. Out of a man who actually lived among us and of whose life we
have many truthful details we make an impossible abstraction of
idealized virtues. It may be said that this could never happen among a
people of strong artistic instincts, and we have certainly in our
conceptions of art been theatrical and imitative rather than dramatic
and real. Possibly the check which is being given to our peculiar
myth-making is a favorable sign for our art.
The myth-makers could not work with Franklin in quite the same way that
they worked with Washington. With Washington they ignored his personal
traits and habits, building him up into a cold military and political
wonder. But Franklin's human side would not down so easily. The human in
him was so interlaced with the divine that the one dragged the other
into light. His dramatic and artistic sense was very strong, far
stronger than in most distinguished Americans; and he made so many plain
statements about his own shortcomings, and followed pleasure and natural
instincts so sympathetically, broadly, and openly, that the efforts to
prepare him for exhibition are usually ludicrous failures.
But the eulogists soon found an effective way to handle him. Although
they could ignore certain phases of his character only so far as the
genial old fellow would let them, they could exaggerate the other phases
to an almost unlimited extent; for his career was in many ways
peculiarly open to exaggeration. It was longer, more varied, and more
full of controversy than Washington's. Washington was twenty-six years
younger than Franklin and died at the age of sixty-seven, while Franklin
lived to be eighty-four. Washington's important public life was all
covered by the twenty-two years from 1775 to 1797, and during more than
three of those years he was in retirement at Mount Vernon. But Franklin
was an active politician, philosopher, man of science, author,
philanthropist, reformer, and diplomat for the forty-odd years from 1745
to 1788.
Almost every event of his life has been distorted until, from the great
and accomplished man he really was, he has been magnified into an
impossible prodigy. Almost everything he wrote about in science has been
put down as a discovery. His wonderful ability in expressing himself has
assisted in this; for if ten men wrote on a subject and Franklin was one
of them, his statement is the one most likely to be preserved, because
the others, being inferior in language, are soon forgotten and lost.
Every scrap of paper he wrote upon is now considered a precious relic
and a great deal of it is printed, so that statements which were but
memoranda or merely his way of formulating other men's knowledge for his
own convenience or for the sake of writing a pleasant letter to a
friend, are given undue importance. Indeed, when we read one of these
letters or memoranda it is so clearly and beautifully expressed and put
in such a captivating form that, as the editor craftily forbears to
comment on it, we instinctively conclude that it must have been a gift
of new knowledge to mankind.
The persistency with which people have tried to magnify Franklin is
curiously shown in the peculiar way in which James Logan's translation
of Cicero's essay on old age was attributed to him. This translation
with notes and a preface was made by Logan and printed in 1744 by
Franklin in his Philadelphia printing-office, and at the foot of the
title-page Franklin's name appeared as the printer. In 1778 the book was
reprinted in London, with Franklin's name on the title-page as the
translator. In 1809 one of his editors, William Duane, actually had this
translation printed in his edition of Franklin's works. The editor was
afterwards accused of having done this with full knowledge that the
translation had not been made by Franklin; but, under the code of
literary morals which has so long prevailed, I suppose he would be held
excusable.
One of Franklin's claims to renown is that he was a self-made man, the
first distinguished American who was created in that way; and it would
seem, therefore, all the more necessary that he should be allowed to
remain as he made himself. I have endeavored to act upon this principle
and so far as possible to let Franklin speak for himself. The analytical
method of writing a man's life is well suited to this purpose. There are
already chronological biographies of Franklin in two volumes or more
giving the events in order with very full details from his birth to his
death. The present single volume is more in the way of an estimate of
his position, worth, and work, and yet gives, I believe, every essential
fact of his career with enough detail to enable the reader to appreciate
it. At the same time the chapters have been arranged with such regard to
chronological order as to show the development of character and
achievement from youth to age.
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 17
II.--EDUCATION 41
III.--RELIGION AND MORALS 78
IV.--BUSINESS AND LITERATURE 132
V.--SCIENCE 167
VI.--THE PENNSYLVANIA POLITICIAN 192
VII.--DIFFICULTIES AND FAILURE IN ENGLAND 231
VIII.--AT HOME AGAIN 265
IX.--THE EMBASSY TO FRANCE AND ITS SCANDALS 270
X.--PLEASURES AND DIPLOMACY IN FRANCE 314
XI.--THE CONSTITUTION-MAKER 349
APPENDIX
FRANKLIN'S DAUGHTER, MRS. FOXCROFT 365
List of Illustrations with Notes
PAGE
THE DUPLESSIS PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN _Frontispiece._
Painted from life by Duplessis in Paris in 1778, and believed to
be the best likeness of Franklin. The reproduction is from the
original in the Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, by
permission of the owner. Duplessis also made a pastel drawing of
Franklin in 1783, which has often been reproduced.
FRANKLIN TOWED BY HIS KITE 19
This picture is copied from an engraving on the title-page of
the old English edition of Franklin's Works, published in 1806
by J. Johnson & Co., London.
THE SUMNER PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN 29
Painted, as is supposed, in London in 1726, when he was twenty
years old, and now in the possession of Harvard University. Its
history and the doubts as to its authenticity are given in the
text.
THE MARTIN PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN 32
Painted by Martin in England in 1765, at the request of Mr.
Robert Alexander, for whom Franklin had performed a service in
examining some documents and giving his opinion.
THE GRUNDMANN IDEAL PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN 34
Painted by Otto Grundmann, a German artist in America, after a
careful study of Franklin's career and of the portraits of him
taken from life. The original is now in the Boston Art Museum.
HOUSE IN WHICH FRANKLIN WAS BORN 42
Franklin's parents lived in this house, which stood on Milk
Street, Boston, until 1810, when it was destroyed by fire.
PRINTING-PRESS AT WHICH FRANKLIN WORKED WHEN A BOY IN BOSTON 45
From a photograph kindly furnished by the Mechanics' Institute
of Boston, in whose rooms the press is exhibited.
THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER AS ABRIDGED BY LORD DESPENCER AND
FRANKLIN 101
The changes in the Venite on the left-hand page are by Franklin,
and perhaps also those in the Te Deum. The changes in the
rubrics are by Lord Despencer, and possibly he also made the
changes in the Te Deum. The copy of the prayer-book from which
this reproduction is made is in the collection of Mr. Howard
Edwards, of Philadelphia.
JOHN FOXCROFT 105
Reproduced by permission of the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania from the painting in their possession. It has been
supposed by some to be a portrait of Franklin; but it has not
the slightest resemblance to his other portraits, and the letter
held in the hand is addressed to John Foxcroft.
WILLIAM FRANKLIN, ROYAL GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 108
Born 1730, died 1813; son of Benjamin Franklin; was Governor of
New Jersey from 1762 to 1776, when he became a Tory. The
reproduction is from an etching by Albert Rosenthal of the
portrait once temporarily in the Philadelphia Library and owned
by Dr. T. Hewson Bache, of Philadelphia.
WILLIAM TEMPLE FRANKLIN 113
Born 1760, died 1823, son of William Franklin, Governor of New
Jersey. He was brought up principally by his grandfather, for
whom he acted as secretary in Paris, during the Revolution, and
by whom he was saved from following his father to Toryism. The
reproduction is from an etching by Albert Rosenthal of the
portrait in the Trumbull Collection, Yale School of Art.
MRS. FRANKLIN 116
This reproduction is from the portrait painted by Matthew Pratt,
and now in the possession of Rev. F. B. Hodge, of Wilkesbarre,
Pennsylvania.
MRS. SARAH BACHE 119
This picture is copied from an engraved reproduction which has
often appeared in books relating to Franklin; but none of these
reproductions are faithful copies of the original painting,
which represents an older and less handsome woman, with more
rugged features and more resemblance to Franklin. Permission to
reproduce the painting could not be secured.
FRONT PAGE OF THE FIRST NUMBER OF THE "PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE" 135
Reproduced by permission from the collection of the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.
TITLE-PAGE OF POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC FOR 1733 144
Reproduced by permission from the collection of the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.
FRANKLIN'S MARITIME SUGGESTIONS 188
These figures accompanied Franklin's letter to Alphonsus Le Roy
on maritime improvements.
FRANKLIN'S LETTER TO STRAHAN 267
William Strahan was Franklin's intimate friend, although they
differed on the subject of the Revolution. The letter was half
jest, half earnest, and in this tone Franklin always wrote to
him on political subjects. In 1784 he wrote him an affectionate,
but teasing and sarcastic letter on the success of the
Revolution.
FRANKLIN CANNOT DIE 275
From an old French engraving in the collection of Mr. Clarence
S. Bement, of Philadelphia. Death has seized Franklin and is
dragging him to the lower world. The figure half kneeling is
America, with her bow and arrows and the skin of a wild beast,
imploring Death to spare her deliverer. Fame is flying in the
air, with a crape on her arm and a trumpet, announcing that _le
grand_ Franklin has saved his country and given her liberty in
spite of tyrants. The spirit of Philosophy and a warrior are
weeping at the foot of the monument, on which is a
lightning-rod; while France, a fair, soft woman, seizes Franklin
in her arms to bear him to the sky.
AMERICA SET FREE BY FRANKLIN 309
From an old French engraving in the collection of Mr. Clarence
S. Bement, of Philadelphia. Like the preceding one, from the
same collection, it represents America as a savage, in
accordance with the French ideas of that time.
FRANKLIN TEARS THE LIGHTNING FROM THE SKY AND THE SCEPTRE FROM THE
TYRANTS 312
From an old French engraving in the collection of Mr. Clarence
S. Bement, of Philadelphia. The figure with her arm on
Franklin's lap is America.
FRANKLIN RELICS IN THE POSSESSION OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF
PENNSYLVANIA 330
The cups and saucers are Dresden china, given him by Madame
Helvetius. The china punch-barrel was given him by Count
d'Artois; the wine-glass is one of the heavy kind then in use;
the picture-frame contains a printed dinner invitation sent by
him to the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
PORTRAIT OF LOUIS XVI. 346
The kings of France at that time usually gave their portrait to
a foreign ambassador on his return to his country. This one, by
Sicardi, which was given to Franklin, was formerly surrounded by
two rows of four hundred and eight diamonds, and was probably
worth from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. It is now in the
possession of Mr. J. May Duane, of Philadelphia, by whose
permission it is reproduced.
FRANKLIN PORTRAIT IN WEST COLLECTION 350
A pencil drawing with Benjamin West's name on the back, now the
property of Hon. S. W. Pennypacker, of Philadelphia. It is
supposed by some authorities to be merely a copy of the bust by
Ceracchi; others believe it to be a drawing from life by West.
FRANKLIN'S GRAVE IN CHRIST CHURCH GRAVEYARD, PHILADELPHIA 360
The flat stone marks the grave of Franklin and his wife. The
larger upright stone is in memory of John Read, Mrs. Franklin's
father, and the smaller one is in memory of Franklin's son,
Francis, who died in infancy.
The True Benjamin Franklin
I
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Franklin was a rather large man, and is supposed to have been about five
feet ten inches in height. In his youth he was stout, and in old age
corpulent and heavy, with rounded shoulders. The portraits of him reveal
a very vigorous-looking man, with a thick upper arm and a figure which,
even in old age, was full and rounded. In fact, this rounded contour is
his most striking characteristic, as the angular outline is the
characteristic of Lincoln. Franklin's figure was a series of harmonious
curves, which make pictures of him always pleasing. These curves
extended over his head and even to the lines of his face, softening the
expression, slightly veiling the iron resolution, and entirely
consistent with the wide sympathies, varied powers, infinite shrewdness,
and vast experience which we know he possessed.
In his earliest portrait as a youth of twenty he looks as if his bones
were large; but in later portraits this largeness of bone which he might
have had from his Massachusetts origin is not so evident. He was,
however, very muscular, and prided himself on it. When he was a young
printer, as he tells us in his Autobiography, he could carry with ease a
large form of letters in each hand up and down stairs. In his old age,
when past eighty, he is described as insisting on lifting unaided heavy
books and dictionaries to show the strength he still retained.
He was not brought up on fox-hunting and other sports, like Washington,
and there are no amusements of this sort to record of him, except his
swimming, in which he took great delight and continued until long after
he had ceased to be a youth. He appears, when a boy, to have been fond
of sailing in Boston Harbor, but has told us little about it. In
swimming he excelled. He could perform all the ordinary feats in the
water which were described in the swimming-books of his day, and on one
occasion tied himself to the string of his kite and was towed by it
across a pond a mile wide. In after-years he believed that he could in
this way cross the English Channel from Dover to Calais, but he admitted
that the packet-boat was preferable.
His natural fondness for experiment led him to try the effect of
fastening oval paddles to his hands, which gave him greater speed in
swimming, but were too fatiguing to his wrists. Paddles or large sandals
fastened to his feet he soon found altered the stroke, which the
observant boy had discovered was made with the inside of the feet and
ankles as well as with the flat part of the foot.
[Illustration: FRANKLIN TOWED BY HIS KITE]
While in London, as a wandering young journeyman printer, he taught an
acquaintance, Wygate, to swim in two lessons. Returning from Chelsea
with a party of Wygate's friends, he gave them an exhibition of his
skill, going through all the usual tricks in the water, to their great
amazement and admiration, and swimming from near Chelsea to Blackfriars,
a distance of four miles. Wygate proposed that they should travel
through Europe, maintaining themselves by giving swimming-lessons, and
Franklin was at first inclined to adopt the suggestion.
Just as he was on the eve of returning to Pennsylvania, Sir William
Wyndham, at one time Chancellor of the Exchequer, having heard of his
swimming feats, wanted to engage him to teach his sons; but his ship
being about to sail, Franklin was obliged to decline. If he had remained
in England, he tells us, he would probably have started a
swimming-school.
When forty-three years old, retired from active business, and deep in
scientific researches, he lived in a house at Second and Race Streets,
Philadelphia. His garden is supposed to have extended to the river,
where every warm summer evening he used to spend an hour or two swimming
and sporting in the water.
This skill in swimming and the agility and grace which Franklin
displayed in performing feats in the water are good tests of general
strength of muscles, lungs, and heart. So far as can be discovered, only
one instance is recorded of his using his physical power to do violence
to his fellow-man.
He had a friend named Collins, rather inclined to drink, who, being in a
boat with Franklin and some other youths, on the Delaware, refused to
take his turn at rowing. He announced that the others should row him
home. Franklin, already much provoked at him for not returning money
which he had lent him, and for other misconduct, insisted that he row
his share. Collins replied that Franklin should row or he would throw
him overboard, and, as he was approaching him for that purpose, Franklin
seized him by the collar and breeches and threw him into the river,
where they kept him till his strength was exhausted and his temper
cooled.
Until he was forty years old Franklin worked on his own account or for
others as a printer, which included hard manual labor; for, even when in
business for himself, he did everything,--made his own ink, engraved
wooden cuts and ornaments, set the type, and worked the heavy
hand-presses. His pleasures were books, the theatre, and love-affairs.
Except swimming, he had no taste for out-door amusements. Sport, either
with rod, gun, horse, or hound, was altogether out of his line. As he
became prosperous and retired from the active business of money-getting,
he led an entirely sedentary life to the end of his long career.
Although he did a vast amount of work in his time, was fond of early
rising, and had the greatest endurance and capacity for labor, there
was, nevertheless, a touch of indolence about him. He did the things
which he loved and which came easy to him, cultivated his tastes and
followed their bent in a way rather unusual in self-made men. It has
been said of him that he never had the patience to write a book. His
writings have exerted great influence, are now considered of inestimable
value, and fill ten large volumes, but they are all occasional pieces,
letters, and pamphlets written to satisfy some need of the hour.
His indolence was more in his manner than in his character. It was the
confident indolence of genius. He was never in a hurry, and this was
perhaps one of the secrets of his success. His portraits all show this
trait. In nearly every one of them the whole attitude, the droop of the
shoulders and arms, and the quietude of the face are reposeful.
He seems to have been totally without either irritability or
excitability. In this he was the reverse of Washington, who was subject
to violent outbursts of anger, could swear "like an angel of God," as
one of his officers said, and had a fiery temper to control. Perhaps
Franklin's strong sense of humor saved him from oaths; there are no
swearing stories recorded of him; instead of them we have innumerable
jokes and witticisms. His anger when aroused was most deliberate,
calculating, and judicious. His enemies and opponents he always
ridiculed, often, however, with so little malice or sting that I have no
doubt they were sometimes compelled to join in the laugh. He never
attacked or abused.
Contentment was a natural consequence of these qualities, and
contributed largely to maintain his vigor through eighty-four years of a
very stormy life. It was a family trait. Many of his relations possessed
it; and he describes some of them whom he looked up in England as living
in happiness and enjoyment, in spite of the greatest poverty. Some able
men struggle with violence, bitterness, and heart-ache for the great
prizes of life, but all these prizes tumbled in on Franklin, who seems
to have had a fairy that brought them to him in obedience to his
slightest wish.
His easy-going sedentary life, of course, told on him in time. After
middle life he had both the gout and the stone, but his natural vitality
fortified him against them. He was as temperate as it was possible to be
in that age, and he studied his constitution and its requirements very
closely. He was so much interested in science that he not infrequently
observed, reasoned, and to some extent experimented in the domain which
properly belongs to physicians.
When only fifteen years old, and apprenticed in the printing-office of
his brother in Boston, in the year 1721, he became a vegetarian. A book
written by one of the people who have for many centuries been advocating
that plan of living fell in his way and converted him. It appealed to
his natural economy and to his desire for spare money with which to buy
books. He learned from the book the various ways of cooking vegetables,
and told his brother that if he would give him half the money paid for
his board he would board himself. He found very soon that he could pay
for his vegetable diet and still save half the money allowed him, and
that he could also very quickly eat his rice, potatoes, and pudding at
the printing-office and have most of the dinner-hour for reading the
books his spare money procured.
This was calculating very closely for a boy of fifteen, and shows
unusual ability as well as willingness to observe and master small
details. Such ability usually comes later in life with strengthened
intellect, but Franklin seems to have had this sort of mature strength
very early.
He did not remain an entire convert to the vegetarians, but he often
practised their methods and apparently found no inconvenience in it. He
could eat almost anything, and change from one diet to another without
difficulty. Two years after his first experiment with vegetarianism he
ran away from his brother at Boston, and found work at Philadelphia with
a rough, ignorant old printer named Keimer, who wanted, among other
projects, to form a religious sect, and to have Franklin help him.
Franklin played with his ideas for a while, and finally said that he
would agree to wear a long beard and observe Saturday instead of Sunday,
like Keimer, if Keimer would join him in a vegetable diet.
He found a woman in the neighborhood to cook for them, and taught her
how to prepare forty kinds of vegetable food, which reduced their cost
of living to eighteen pence a week for each. But Keimer, who was a heavy
meat-eater, could stand it only three months, and then ordered a
roast-pig dinner, to be enjoyed by the two vegetarians and a couple of
women. Keimer, however, arrived first at the feast, and before any of
his guests appeared had eaten the whole pig.
While working in the printing-office in London, Franklin drank water, to
the great astonishment and disgust of the beer-guzzling Englishmen who
were his fellow-laborers. They could not understand how the
water-American, as they called him, could go without strength-giving
beer and yet be able to carry a large form of letters in each hand up
and down stairs, while they could carry only one with both hands.
The man who worked one of the presses with Franklin drank a pint before
breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, one between
breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, another at six o'clock, and another
after he had finished his day's work. The American boy, with his early
mastery of details, reasoned with him that the strength furnished by the
beer could come only from the barley dissolved in the water of which the
beer was composed; that there was a larger portion of flour in a penny
loaf, and if he ate a loaf and drank a pint of water with it he would
derive more strength than from a pint of beer. But the man would not be
convinced, and continued to spend a large part of his weekly wages for
what Franklin calls the cursed beverage which kept him in poverty and
wretchedness.
Franklin was, however, never a teetotaler. He loved, as he tells us, a
glass and a song. Like other people of that time, he could drink without
inconvenience a quantity which nowadays, especially in America, seems
surprising. Some of the chief-justices of England are described by their
biographer, Campbell, as two- or four-bottle men, according to the
quantity they could consume at a sitting. Washington, Mr. Ford tells us,
drank habitually from half a pint to a pint of Madeira, besides punch
and beer, which would now be thought a great deal. But Franklin
considered himself a very temperate man. When writing his Autobiography,
in his old age, he reminds his descendants that to temperance their
ancestor "ascribes his long-continued health and what is still left to
him of a good constitution."
Like most of those who live to a great age, he was the child of
long-lived parents. "My mother," he says, "had likewise an excellent
constitution; she suckled all her ten children. I never knew either my
father or mother to have any sickness but that of which they died,--he
at eighty-nine and she at eighty-five years of age."
He was fond of air-baths, which he seems to have thought hardened his
skin and helped it to perform its functions, and when in London in 1768
he wrote one of his pretty letters about them to Dr. Dubourg in Paris.
"You know the cold bath has long been in vogue here as a tonic;
but the shock of the cold water has always appeared to me,
generally speaking, as too violent, and I have found it much
more agreeable to my constitution to bathe in another element, I
mean cold air. With this view I rise almost every morning and
sit in my chamber, without any clothes whatever, half an hour or
an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing.
This practice is not in the least painful, but, on the contrary,
agreeable; and if I return to bed afterwards, before I dress
myself, as sometimes happens, I make a supplement to my night's
rest of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep that can be
imagined. I find no ill consequences whatever resulting from it,
and that at least it does not injure my health, if it does not
in fact contribute much to its preservation. I shall therefore
call it for the future a _bracing_ or _tonic_ bath." (Bigelow's
Works of Franklin, vol. iv. p. 193.)
Some years afterwards, while in Paris and suffering severely from gout
in his foot, he used to expose the foot naked out of bed, which he
found relieved the pain, because, as he supposed, the skin was given
more freedom to act in a natural way. His remarks on air-baths were
published in the early editions of his works and induced many people to
try them. Davis, in his "Travels in America," says that they must have
been suggested to him by a passage in Aubrey's "Miscellanies;" but,
after searching all through that old volume, I cannot find it. Franklin,
however, made no claim to a discovery. Such baths have been used by
physicians to strengthen delicate persons, but in a more guarded and
careful manner than that in which Franklin applied them.
It was characteristic of his genial temperament that he loved to dream
in his sleep and to recollect his dreams. "I am often," he says, "as
agreeably entertained by them as by the scenery of an opera." He wrote a
pleasant little essay, addressed to an unknown young lady, on "The Art
of Procuring Pleasant Dreams," which may be said to belong among his
medical writings. Fresh air and ventilation are the important
dream-persuaders, and bad dreams and restlessness in bed are caused by
excess of perspirable matter which is not allowed to get away from the
skin. Eat less, have thinner and more porous bedclothes, and if you are
restless, get up, beat and turn your pillows, shake all the sheets
twenty times, and walk about naked for a while. Then, when you return,
the lovely dreams will come.
Closely connected with his faith in air-baths was his opinion that
people seldom caught cold from exposure to air or even to dampness. He
wrote letters on the subject and prepared notes of his observations.
These notes are particularly interesting and full of curious
suggestions. The diseases usually classed as colds, he said, are not
known by that name in any other language, and the name is misleading,
for very few of them arise from cold or dampness. Indians and sailors,
who are continually wet, do not catch cold; nor is cold taken by
swimming. And he went on enumerating the instances of people who lived
in the woods, in barns, or with open windows, and, instead of catching
cold, found their health improved. Cold, he thought, was caused in most
cases by impure air, want of exercise, or over-eating.
"I have long been satisfied from observation, that besides the
general colds now termed influenzas (which may possibly spread
by contagion, as well as by a particular quality of the air),
people often catch cold from one another when shut up together
in close rooms and coaches, and when sitting near and conversing
so as to breathe in each other's transpiration; the disorder
being in a certain state. I think, too, that it is the frouzy,
corrupt air from animal substances, and the perspired matter
from our bodies, which being long confined in beds not lately
used, and clothes not lately worn, and books long shut up in
close rooms, obtains that kind of putridity which occasions the
colds observed upon sleeping in, wearing, and turning over such
bedclothes or books, and not their coldness or dampness. From
these causes, but more from too full living, with too little
exercise, proceed, in my opinion, most of the disorders which,
for about one hundred and fifty years past, the English have
called _colds_."
Much of this is true in a general way, for medical practitioners have
long held that all colds do not arise from exposure or draughts; but
they do not admit that colds can be taken from turning over old books
and clothes, although the dust from these might make one sneeze.
John Adams and Franklin while travelling together through New Jersey to
meet Lord Howe, in 1776, discussed the question of colds, and the former
has left an amusing account of it. The taverns were so full at Brunswick
that they had to sleep in the same bed. Franklin insisted on leaving the
window wide open, and discoursed on the causes of colds until they both
fell asleep.
"I have often asked him whether a person heated with exercise
going suddenly into cold air, or standing still in a current of
it, might not have his pores suddenly contracted, his
perspiration stopped, and that matter thrown into the
circulation, or cast upon the lungs, which he acknowledged was
the cause of colds. To this he never could give me a
satisfactory answer, and I have heard that in the opinion of his
own able physician, Dr. Jones, he fell a sacrifice at last, not
to the stone, but to his own theory, having caught the violent
cold which finally choked him, by sitting for some hours at a
window, with the cool air blowing upon him." (Adams's Works,
vol. iii. p. 75.)
In some of his letters Franklin denied positively that colds could be
taken by exposure. He got a young physician to experiment on the effect
of nakedness in increasing perspiration, and when he found, or thought
he had found, that the perspiration was greater than when the body was
clothed, he jumped to the conclusion that exposure could not check
perspiration. In a passage in his notes, however, he seems to admit that
a sudden cold air or a draught might check it.
[Illustration: THE SUMNER PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN]
He wrote so well and so prettily on colds that people began to think he
was the discoverer of their causes, and his biographer, Parton, goes
so far as to say so. But upon inquiry among learned physicians I cannot
find that they recognize him as a discoverer, or that he has any
standing on this question in medical history. It would seem that he
merely collected and expressed the observations of others as well as his
own; none of them were entirely new, and many of them are now considered
unsound.
Nearer to the truth is Parton's statement that "he was the first
effective preacher of the blessed gospel of ventilation." He certainly
studied that subject very carefully, and was an authority on it, being
appointed while in England to prepare a plan for ventilating the Houses
of Parliament. It would, however, be better to say that he was one of
the most prominent advocates of ventilation rather than the first
effective preacher of it; for in Bigelow's edition of his works[1] will
be found an excellent essay on the subject in which the other advocates
are mentioned. But Parton goes on to say, "He spoke, and the windows of
hospitals were lowered; consumption ceased to gasp and fever to inhale
poison;" which is an extravagant statement that he would find
difficulty, I think, in supporting.
In Franklin's published works there is a short essay called "A
Conjecture as to the Cause of the Heat of the Blood in Health and of the
Cold and Hot Fits of Some Fevers." The blood is heated, he says, by
friction in the action of the heart, by the distention and contraction
of the arteries, and by being forced through minute vessels. This essay
is very ingenious and well written, and the position given to it in his
works might lead one to suppose that it was of importance; but I am
informed by physicians that it was merely the revamping of an ancient
theory held long before his time, and quite without foundation.
Franklin's excursions into the domain of medicine are not, therefore, to
be considered among his valuable contributions to the welfare of man,
except so far as they encouraged him to advocate fresh air and
ventilation, though they may have assisted him to take better care of
his own health.
Of the numerous portraits of him of varying merit, nearly all of which
have been reproduced over and over again, only a few deserve
consideration for the light they throw on his appearance and character.
The Sumner portrait, as it used to be called, is supposed to have been
painted in London in 1726, when he was there as a young journeyman
printer, twenty years old, and was brought by him to America and given
to his brother John, of Rhode Island. He evidently dressed himself for
this picture in clothes he was not in the habit of wearing at his work;
for he appears in a large wig, a long, decorated coat and waistcoat,
with a mass of white ruffles on his bosom and conspicuous wrist-bands.
The rotund and strongly developed figure is well displayed. Great
firmness and determination are shown in the mouth and lower part of the
face. The animal forces are evidently strong. The face is somewhat
frank, and at the same time very shrewd. The eyes are larger than in
the later portraits, which is not surprising, for eyes are apt to grow
smaller in appearance with age.
This portrait, which is now in Memorial Hall at Harvard University, has
been supposed by some critics not to be a portrait of Franklin at all.
How, they ask, could Franklin, who was barely able to earn his living at
that time, and whose companions were borrowing a large part of his spare
money, afford to have an oil-painting made of himself in such expensive
costume? and why is there no mention of this portrait in any of his
writings? But, on the other hand, the portrait has the peculiar set
expression of the mouth and the long chin which were so characteristic
of Franklin; and it would have been entirely possible for him to have
borrowed the clothes and had the picture painted cheaply or as a
kindness. It is not well painted, need not have been expensive, and, as
there were no photographs then, paintings were the only way by which
people could give their likenesses to relatives.
The Martin portrait, painted when he was about sixty years old,
represents him seated, his elbows resting on a table, and holding a
document, which he is reading with deep but composed and serene
attention. It was no doubt intended to represent him in a characteristic
attitude. As showing the calm philosopher and diplomat reading and
thinking, somewhat idealized and yet a more or less true likeness, it is
in many respects the best picture we have of him. But we cannot see the
eyes, and it does not reveal as much character as we could wish.
The Grundmann portrait, an excellent photograph of which hangs in the
Philadelphia Library, was painted by a German artist, after a careful
study of Franklin's career and of all the portraits of him which had
been painted from life. As an attempt to reproduce his characteristics
and idealize them it is a distinct success and very interesting. He is
seated in a chair, in his court-dress, with long stockings and
knee-breeches, leaning back, his head and shoulders bent forward, while
his gaze is downward. He is musing over something, and there is that
characteristic shrewd smile on the lower part of the rugged face. It is
the smile of a most masterful and cunning intellect; but no one fears
it: it seems as harmless as your mother's. You try to imagine which one
of his thousand clever strokes and sayings was passing through his mind
that day; and the strong, intensely individualized figure, which
resembles that of an old athlete, is wonderfully suggestive of life,
experience, and contest.
But the Duplessis portrait, which was painted from life in Paris in
1778, when he was seventy-two, reveals more than any of them. The Sumner
portrait is Franklin the youth; the Martin and the Grundmann portraits
are Franklin the philosopher and statesman; the Duplessis portrait is
Franklin the man.
[Illustration: THE MARTIN PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN]
Unfortunately, it is impossible to get a good reproduction of the
Duplessis portrait, because there is so much detail in it and the
coloring and lights and shadows cannot be successfully copied. But any
one who will examine the original or any good replicas of it in oil
will, I am convinced, see Franklin as he really was. The care in
details, the wrinkles, and the color of the skin give us confidence in
it as a likeness. The round, strong, but crude form of the boy of twenty
has been beaten and changed by time into a hundred qualities and
accomplishments, yet the original form is still discernible, and the
face looks straight at us: we see the eyes and every line close at hand.
In this, the best portrait for studying Franklin's eye, we see at once
that it is the eye of a very sensuous man, and we also see many details
which mark the self-made man, the man who never had been and never
pretended to be an aristocrat. This is in strong contrast to
Washington's portraits, which all disclose a man distinctly of the upper
class and conscious of it.
But, in spite of this homeliness in the Duplessis portrait and the easy,
careless manner in which the clothes are worn, there are no signs of
what might be called vulgarity. The wonderful and many-sided
accomplishments of the man carried him well above this. Brought up as a
boy at candle- and soap-making, he nevertheless, when prosperous, turned
instinctively to higher things and refined accomplishments and was
comparatively indifferent to material wealth. Nor do we find in him any
of that bitter hostility and jealousy of the established and successful
which more modern experience might lead us to expect.
The Duplessis portrait conforms to what we read of Franklin in
representing him as hale and vigorous at seventy-two. The face is full
of lines, but they are the lines of thought, and of thought that has
come easily and cheerfully; there are no traces of anxiety, gnawing
care, or bitterness. In Paris, at the time the Duplessis portrait was
painted, Franklin was regarded as a rather unusual example of vigor and
good health in old age. John Adams in his Diary uses him as a standard,
and speaks of other old men in France as being equal or almost equal to
him in health.
Although not so free from disease as were his parents, he was not much
troubled with it until late in life. When a young man of about
twenty-one he had a bad attack of pleurisy, of which he nearly died. It
terminated in an abscess of the left lung, and when this broke, he was
almost suffocated by the quantity and suddenness of the discharge. A few
years afterwards he had a similar attack of pleurisy, ending in the same
way; and it was an abscess in his lung which finally caused his death.
The two abscesses which he had when a young man seem to have left no ill
effects; and after his two attacks of pleurisy he was free from serious
sickness for many years, until at the age of fifty-one he went to
England to represent the Province of Pennsylvania. Soon after landing he
was attacked by an obscure fever, of which he does not give the name,
and which disabled him for eight weeks. He was delirious, and they
cupped him and gave him enormous quantities of bark.
[Illustration: THE GRUNDMANN IDEAL PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN]
After he had passed middle life he found that he could not remain
entirely well unless he took a journey every year. During the nine
years of his residence in Paris as minister to France he was unable to
take these journeys, and as a consequence his health rapidly
deteriorated. He had violent attacks which incapacitated him for weeks,
sometimes for months, and at the close of the nine years he could
scarcely walk and could not bear the jolting of a carriage.
In France his diseases were first the gout and afterwards the stone. He
was one of those stout, full-blooded men who the doctors say are
peculiarly liable to gout, and his tendency to it was evidently
increased by his very sedentary habits. He confesses this in part of
that clever dialogue which he wrote to amuse the Parisians:
"MIDNIGHT, October 22, 1780.
"_Franklin._--Eh! Oh! Eh! What have I done to merit these cruel
sufferings?
"_Gout._--Many things; you have ate and drank too freely, and
too much indulged those legs of yours in their indolence.
"_Franklin._--Who is it that accuses me?
"_Gout._--It is I, even I, the Gout.
"_Franklin._--What! my enemy in person?
"_Gout._--No, not your enemy.
"_Franklin._--I repeat it; my enemy; for you would not only
torment my body to death, but ruin my good name; you reproach me
as a glutton and a tippler; now all the world, that knows me,
will allow that I am neither the one nor the other.
"_Gout._--The world may think as it pleases; it is always very
complaisant to itself, and sometimes to its friends; but I very
well know that the quantity of meat and drink proper for a man,
who takes a reasonable degree of exercise, would be too much for
another, who never takes any.
"_Franklin._--I take--Eh! Oh!--as much exercise--Eh!--as I can,
Madam Gout. You know my sedentary state, and on that account, it
would seem, Madam Gout, as if you might spare me a little,
seeing it is not altogether my own fault.