CHAPTER IV

FRANKLIN'S FAMILY RELATIONS

When we turn from Franklin's philanthropic zeal and public spirit to his

more intimate personal and social traits, we find much that is admirable,

not a little that is lovable, and some things with quite a different

aspect. His vow of self-correction, when he had sowed his wild oats and

reaped the usual harvest of smut and tares, was, as we have intimated,

retrospective as well as prospective. He violated his obligations, as his

brother James' apprentice, by absconding from Boston before his time was

up, and added aggravation to his original offence by returning to Boston,

and exhibiting his genteel new suit, watch and silver money to his

brother's journeymen, while he descanted to them upon the land of milk and

honey from which he had brought back these indicia of prosperity; his

brother all the time standing by grum and sullen, and struggling with the

emotions which afterwards caused him to say to his stepmother, when she

expressed her wish that the brothers might become reconciled, that Benjamin

had insulted him in such a manner before his people that he could never

forget or forgive it. In this, however, he was mistaken, as Franklin

tersely observes in the _Autobiography_. Some ten years subsequently, on

his return from one of his decennial visits to Boston, Franklin stopped

over at Newport, to see this brother, who had removed thither, and he

found him in a state of rapid physical decline. The former differences were

forgotten, the meeting was very cordial and affectionate, and, in

compliance with a request, then made of him by James, Franklin took James'

son, a boy of ten, as an apprentice, into his own printing house at

Philadelphia. Indeed, he did more than he was asked to do; for he sent the

boy for some years to school before putting him to work. Afterwards, when

the nephew became old enough to launch out into business on his own

account, Franklin helped him to establish himself as a printer in New

England with gifts of printing materials and a loan of more than two

hundred pounds. Thus was the first _deleatur_ of pricking conscience duly

heeded by Franklin, the Printer; the first _erratum_ revised. And it is but

just to him to say that the _erratum_, if the whole truth were told, was

probably more venial than his forgiving spirit allowed him to fully

disclose. Under the indentures of apprenticeship, it was as incumbent upon

the older brother to abstain from excessive punishment as it was upon the

younger not to abscond. Franklin, in the _Autobiography_, while stating

that James was passionate and often beat him, also states that James was

otherwise not an ill-natured man, and finds extenuation for his brother's

violence in the fear of the latter that the success of the Silence Dogood

letters might make the young apprentice vain, and in the fact that the

young apprentice himself was perhaps too saucy and provoking. Franklin

almost always had a word of generous palliation for anyone who had wronged

him. The chances, we think, distinctly are that the real nature of the

relations between James and Benjamin are to be found not in the text of the

_Autobiography_ but in the note to it in which its author declares that the

harsh and tyrannical treatment of his brother might have been a means of

impressing him with that aversion to arbitrary power which had stuck to him

through his whole life. Nor should it be forgotten that the younger

brother did not bring the Canaan south of the Delaware, nor the watch and

other evidences of the good fortune that he had found there, to the

attention of James' journeymen until James, whom he had called to see at

the printing house, where these journeymen were employed, had received him

coldly, looked him all over, and turned to his work again. There is the

fact besides, if Franklin is to be permitted to testify in his own behalf,

that, when the disputes between the two brothers were submitted to their

father, whose good sense and fairness frequently led him to be chosen as an

arbitrator between contending parties, the judgment was generally in

Benjamin's favor; either, he says, because he was usually in the right (he

fancied) or else was a better pleader. Another _erratum_ was revised when,

after plighting his troth to Deborah Read on the eve of his first voyage to

London, and then forgetting it in the distractions of the English capital,

he subsequently married her. Still another was revised when he discharged

the debt to Mr. Vernon, which occasioned him so much mental distress. The

debt arose in this manner: On his return journey to Philadelphia, after his

first visit to Boston, he was asked by Mr. Vernon, a friend of his brother,

John, who resided at Newport, to collect the sum of thirty-five pounds

currency due to Mr. Vernon in Pennsylvania, and to keep it until Mr. Vernon

gave him instructions about its remittance. The money was duly collected by

Franklin on his way to Philadelphia, but unfortunately for him his youthful

friend Collins, before his departure from Boston, had decided to remove to

Pennsylvania, too, and proceeding from Boston to New York in advance of

him, was his companion from New York to Philadelphia. While awaiting

Franklin's arrival at New York, Collins drank up and gambled away all his

own money. The consequence was that Franklin had to pay his lodging for him

at New York and defray all his subsequent expenses. The journey to

Philadelphia could be completed only with the aid of the Vernon debt, and,

after the two reached Philadelphia, Collins, being unable to obtain any

employment because of his bad habits, and knowing that Franklin had the

balance of the Vernon collection in his hands, repeatedly borrowed sums

from him, promising to repay them as soon as he was earning something

himself. By these loans the amount collected for Mr. Vernon was finally

reduced to such an extent that Franklin was at a painful loss to know what

he should do in case Mr. Vernon demanded payment. The thought of his

situation haunted him for some years to come, but happily for him Mr.

Vernon was an exception to the saying of Poor Richard that creditors are a

superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times. He kindly made

no demand upon Franklin for quite a long period, and in the end merely put

him in mind of the debt, though not pressing him to pay it; whereupon

Franklin wrote to him, we are told by the _Autobiography_, an ingenuous

letter of acknowledgment, craved his forbearance a little longer, which was

granted, and later on, as soon as he was able to do so, paid the principal

with interest and many thanks. Just why Mr. Vernon was such an indulgent

creditor the _Autobiography_ does not reveal. If, as Franklin subsequently

wrote to Strahan, the New England people were artful to get into debt and

but poor pay, Mr. Vernon at any rate furnishes evidence that they could be

generous lenders. Perhaps Mr. Vernon simply had his favorable

prepossessions like many other men who knew Franklin in his early life, or

perhaps he had some of Franklin's own quick sympathy with the trials and

struggles of youth, and was not averse to lending him the use, even though

compulsory, of a little capital, or, perhaps, he was restrained from

dunning Franklin by his friendship for Franklin's brother.

The _erratum_ into which Franklin fell in writing and publishing his

free-thinking dissertation on _Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_,

which was dedicated to his friend Ralph, he revised, as we have seen, by

destroying all the copies upon which he could lay his hands and also, we

might add, by a counter pamphlet in which he recanted and combated his own

reasonings. In his unreflecting hours he mixed the poison; in his more

reflective hours he compounded the antidote.

Franklin was guilty of another _erratum_ when Ralph found that it was one

thing to have an essay on Liberty dedicated to him by a friend and another

thing to have the friend taking liberties with his mistress. This _erratum_

was never revised by Franklin unless upon principles of revision with which

Ralph himself at least could not find fault, as the history of the

_erratum_ is told in the _Autobiography_. The young woman in this case was

a milliner, genteelly bred, sensible, lively, and of most pleasing

conversation. Ralph, who, until Pope brought him back with a disillusioning

thud to the dull earth by a shaft from the _Dunciad_, imagined himself to

be endowed with an exalted poetic genius, read plays to her in the

evenings, and finally formed a _liaison_ with her. They lived together for

a time, but, finding that her income was not sufficient to sustain them

both and the child that was the fruit of the connection, he took charge of

a country school where he taught ten or a dozen boys how to read and write

at sixpence each a week, assumed Franklin's name because he did not wish

the world to know that he had ever been so meanly employed, recommended his

mistress to Franklin's protection, and, in spite of every dissuasive that

Franklin could bring to bear upon him, including a copy of a great part of

one of Young's satires, which set forth in a strong light the folly of

courting the Muses, sent to Franklin from time to time profuse specimens of

the _magnum opus_ over which he was toiling. In the meantime, the

milliner, having suffered on Ralph's account in both reputation and estate,

was occasionally compelled to obtain pecuniary assistance from Franklin.

The result was that he grew fond of her society, and, presuming upon his

importance to her, attempted familiarities with her which she repelled with

a proper resentment, and communicated to Ralph, who, on his next return to

London, let Franklin know that he considered all his obligations to him

cancelled. As these obligations consisted wholly of sums that Franklin had

lent to Ralph, or advanced on Ralph's account from time to time out of his

earnings from his vocation as a printer, Franklin, we suppose, might fairly

conclude, in accordance with Ralph's method of reasoning, that he had

revised the _erratum_ by duly paying the penalty for it in terms of money,

even if in no other form of atonement. At the time, he consoled himself

with the reflection that Ralph's cancellation of obligations, which he had

no means of paying, was not very material, and that Ralph's withdrawal of

his friendship at least meant relief from further pecuniary loans. He does

not say so, but exemption from further instalments of the laboring epic

must have counted for something too. The cross-currents of human existence,

however, were destined to again bring Ralph and Franklin into personal

intercourse. It was after Franklin had arrived in England in 1757 as the

agent of the People of Pennsylvania and Ralph, not a Homer or Milton, as he

had fondly hoped to be, but a historian, pamphleteer and newspaper writer

of no contemptible abilities, had gotten beyond the necessity of doing what

Pope in a truculent note to the _Dunciad_ had charged him with doing,

namely, writing on both sides of a controversy on one and the same day, and

afterwards publicly justifying the morality of his conduct. Indeed, he had

gotten far enough beyond it at this stage of his life to be even a sufferer

from the gout, and, remarkable as it may seem, in the light of the manner

in which he had paid his indebtedness to Franklin, to be equal to the

nicety of returning to the Duke of Bedford one hundred and fifty of the two

hundred pounds that the Duke of Bedford had contributed to the support of

the _Protestor_, a newspaper conducted by Ralph in the interest of the Duke

of Bedford against the Duke of Newcastle. The _Autobiography_ states that

from Governor Denny Franklin had previously learned that Ralph was still

alive, that he was esteemed one of the best political writers in England,

had been employed in the dispute between Prince Frederick and the King, and

had obtained a pension of three hundred a year; that his reputation was

indeed small as a poet, Pope having damned his poetry in the _Dunciad_, but

that his prose was thought as good as any man's. A few months after

receiving this information, Franklin arrived in England, and Ralph called

on him to renew the tie sundered for some thirty years. One sequel was a

letter from Franklin to his wife in which he wrote to her as follows:

I have seen Mr. Ralph, and delivered him Mrs.

Garrigues's letter. He is removed from Turnham Green,

when I return, I will tell you everything relating to

him, in the meantime I must advise Mrs. Garrigue not to

write to him again, till I send her word how to direct

her letters, he being unwilling, for some good reasons,

that his present wife should know anything of his

having any connections in America. He expresses great

affection for his daughter and grandchildren. He has

but one child here.

Other _errata_ of Franklin were due to the amorous disposition over which

he took such little pains to draw the veil of delicacy and reserve. Sexual

ardor has doubtless exerted quite as imperious a dominion in youth over

some other great men, but none of them have been so willing to confess the

overbearing force of its importunities. Speaking of the time prior to his

marriage, when he was twenty-four years of age, Franklin says in the

_Autobiography_: "In the meantime, that hard-to-be-governed passion of

youth hurried me frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in my

way, which were attended with some expense and great inconvenience, besides

a continual risque to my health by a distemper which of all things I

dreaded, though by great good luck I escaped it." It was to his son,

strangely enough, that this chapter of his personal history was unfolded.

Franklin was writing a word of warning as well as of hope for his

posterity, and he painted himself, as Cromwell wished to be painted, wart

and all.

For such _errata_ as these there was no atonement to be made except in the

sense of self-degradation likely, in the case of every self-respecting man,

to follow the illicit gratification of strong physical appetites, and this

Franklin had too ingenuous a way of looking at sexual irregularity to feel

very acutely. The only real reinforcement that a nature like his could find

against what Ferdinand in the _Tempest_ calls the suggestions of "our

worser genius" was the sedative influence of marriage, its duties, its

responsibilities, and its calm equable flow of mutual affection; and

Franklin was early married and found in marriage and the human interests

that cluster about it an uncommon measure of satisfaction and happiness.

It is an old, old story, that story of Benjamin and Deborah told in the

_Autobiography_. It began on the memorable Sunday morning, when the runaway

apprentice, shortly after landing at the Market Street wharf in

Philadelphia, hungry, dirty from his journey, dressed in his working

clothes, and with his great flap pockets stuffed with shirts and stockings,

passed up Market Street before the eyes of his future wife, which were alit

with merriment as he passed, clasping a great puffy Philadelphia roll under

each arm and eating a third. She saw him from her father's door as he went

by, presenting this "awkward, ridiculous appearance," and little realized

that the ludicrous apparition which she saw was not only to be her lifelong

consort, but, stranger as he then was to every human being in Philadelphia,

was in coming years to confer upon that city no small part of the heritage

of his own imperishable renown.

The pair were soon brought into close relations with each other. Keimer,

the printer, with whom Benjamin found employment, could not lodge Benjamin

in his own house for lack of furniture; so he found lodging for him with

Mr. Read, Keimer's landlord and Deborah's father. And Benjamin was now in a

very different plight from that in which she had first seen him; for he was

earning a livelihood for himself, and his chest with better clothes in it

than those that he had on when he was eating his roll under such

difficulties had come around to him by sea. He was not long in forming "a

great respect and affection" for Deborah, which he had some reason to

believe were reciprocated by her. Courtship followed, but he was on the

point of setting out for London on the fool's errand which Governor Keith

had planned for him, he and Deborah were but a little over eighteen, and

her mother thought that it would be more convenient for the marriage to

take place on his return, after he had purchased in London the printing

outfit that he was to buy upon the credit of Governor Keith, who really had

no credit. "Perhaps, too," adds Franklin, "she thought my expectations not

so well founded as I imagined them to be."

The fateful day came when the annual ship between London and Philadelphia

was to sail. Of the fond parting we have no record except Franklin's old

fashioned statement that in leaving he "interchang'd some promises with

Miss Read." These promises, so far as he was concerned, were soon lost to

memory in the lethean cares, diversions and dissipations of eighteenth

century London. By degrees, Franklin tells us, he forgot his engagements

with Miss Read, and never wrote more than one letter to her, and that to

let her know that he was not likely to return soon. "This," he says, "was

another of the great _errata_ of my life, which I should wish to correct if

I were to live it over again." Another of those _errata_ of his life, he

might have added, in regard to which, like his use of Mr. Vernon's money,

his approaches to Ralph's mistress, and his commerce with lewd wenches, the

world, with which silence often passes as current as innocence, would never

have been the wiser, if he had not chosen, as so few men have been

sufficiently courageous and disinterested to do, to make beacons of his own

sins for others to steer their lives by. He did return, as we know, but

Miss Read was Miss Read no longer. In his absence, her friends, despairing

of his return after the receipt of his letter by Deborah (how mercilessly

he divulges it all), had persuaded her to marry another, one Rogers, a

potter, "a worthless fellow, tho' an excellent workman, which was the

temptation to her friends." With him, however, Franklin tells us, "she was

never happy, and soon parted from him, refusing to cohabit with him or bear

his name, it being now said that he had another wife." One more concise

statement from Rogers's marital successor, and Rogers disappears as

suddenly as if shot through a stage trap-door. "He got into debt, ran away

in 1727 or 1728, went to the West Indies, and died there." At that time,

the West Indies seem to have been the dust-pan into which all the human

refuse of colonial America was swept.

In a letter to his friend Catherine Ray, in 1755, Franklin told her that

the cords of love and friendship had in times past drawn him further than

from Rhode Island to Philadelphia, "even back from England to

Philadelphia." This statement, we fear, if not due to the facility with

which every good husband is apt to forget that his wife was not the first

woman that he fell in love with, must be classed with Franklin's statement

in the _Autobiography_ that Sir Hans Sloane persuaded him to let him add an

asbestos purse owned by Franklin to his museum of curiosities, his

statement in a letter to his son that he was never sued until a bill in

chancery was filed against him after his removal from the office of Deputy

Postmaster-General, and his statement made at different times that he never

asked for a public office. We know from Franklin's own pen that it was he

who solicited from Sir Hans Sloane the purchase, and not Sir Hans Sloane

who solicited from him the sale, of the asbestos purse; we know from the

_Autobiography_ that he was sued by some of the farmers to whom he gave his

bond of indemnity at the time of Braddock's expedition long before his

removal from the office of Deputy Postmaster-General, and we know, too, as

the reader has already been told, that he sought Benger's office, as Deputy

Postmaster-General of the Colonies, before death had done more than cast

the shadow of his approach over Benger's face. There is a vast difference

between the situation of a man, who relies upon his memory for the

scattered incidents of his past life, and that of a biographer whose field

of vision takes them all in at one glance. It is true that Franklin did not

know, before he left London, that Deborah had married, but the reasons he

gives in the _Autobiography_ for desiring to return to Philadelphia are

only that he had grown tired of London, remembered with pleasure the happy

months that he had spent in Pennsylvania, and wished again to see it. The

fact is that he did not renew his courtship of Deborah until the worthless

Rogers had left the coast clear by fleeing to the West Indies, and he

himself had in a measure been thrown back upon her by rebuffs in other

directions. His circuitous proposal after his return to a young relative of

Mrs. Godfrey, who with her husband and children occupied a part of his

house, was, as described in the _Autobiography_ more like a negotiation for

a printing outfit than ordinary wooing. If the love that he brought to

this affair had been the only kind of which he was capable, his most ardent

biographer, and every biographer seems to adore him more or less in spite

of occasional sharp shocks to adoration, might well ask whether his love

was not as painfully repellent as his system of morals. The incident would

lose some of its hard, homely outlines if clothed in any but the coarse,

drab vesture of plain-spoken words with which Franklin clothes it.

Mrs. Godfrey [he says in the _Autobiography_] projected

a match for me with a relation's daughter, took

opportunities of bringing us often together, till a

serious courtship on my part ensu'd, the girl being in

herself very deserving. The old folks encourag'd me by

continual invitations to supper, and by leaving us

together, till at length it was time to explain. Mrs.

Godfrey manag'd our little treaty. I let her know that

I expected as much money with their daughter as would

pay off my remaining debt for the printing house, which

I believe was not then above a hundred pounds. She

brought me word they had no such sum to spare; I said

they might mortgage their house in the loan-office. The

answer to this, after some days, was, that they did not

approve the match; that, on inquiry of Bradford, they

had been informed the printing business was not a

profitable one; the types would soon be worn out, and

more wanted; that S. Keimer and D. Harry had failed one

after the other, and I should probably soon follow

them; and, therefore, I was forbidden the house, and

the daughter shut up.

Whether this was a real change of sentiment or only

artifice, on a supposition of our being too far engaged

in aflection to retract, and therefore that we should

steal a marriage, which would leave them at liberty to

give or withhold what they pleas'd, I know not; but I

suspected the latter, resented it, and went no more.

Mrs. Godfrey brought me afterward some more favorable

accounts of their disposition, and would have drawn me

on again; but I declared absolutely my resolution to

have nothing more to do with that family. This was

resented by the Godfreys; we differ'd, and they

removed, leaving me the whole house.

This affair, however, Franklin tells us, turned his thoughts to marriage.

He accordingly looked the matrimonial field, or rather market, over, and,

to use his own euphemism, made overtures of acquaintance in other places;

but he soon found, he further tells us, that, the business of a printer

being generally thought a poor one, he was not to expect money with a wife

unless with such a one as he should not otherwise think agreeable. Then it

was that his heart came back to Deborah, sitting forlorn in the weeds of

separation, though not unquestionably in the weeds of widowhood; for it was

not entirely certain that Rogers was dead. A friendly intercourse had been

maintained all along between Franklin and the members of her family ever

since he had first lodged under their roof, and he had often been invited

to their home, and had given them sound practical advice. It was natural

enough, therefore, that he should pity Miss Read's unfortunate situation

(he never calls her Mrs. Rogers), dejected and averse to society as she

was, that he should reproach himself with his inconstancy as the cause of

her unhappiness, though her mother was good enough to take the whole blame

on herself because she had prevented their marriage before he went off to

London, and was responsible for the other match, and that compassion and

self-accusation should have been gradually succeeded by tenderness and

rekindled affection. The result was a marriage as little attended by

prudential considerations as any that we could readily imagine; and the

words in which Franklin chronicles the event are worthy of exact

reproduction:

Our mutual affection was revived, but there were now

great objections to our union. The match was indeed

looked upon as invalid, a preceding wife being said to

be living in England; but this could not easily be

prov'd, because of the distance; and, tho' there was a

report of his death, it was not certain. Then, tho' it

should be true, he had left many debts, which his

successor might be call'd upon to pay. We ventured,

however, over all these difficulties, and I took her to

wife, September 1st, 1730. None of the inconveniences

happened that we had apprehended; she proved a good and

faithful helpmate, assisted me much by attending the

shop; we throve together, and have ever mutually

endeavour'd to make each other happy.

This paragraph from the _Autobiography_ does not contain the only tribute

paid by Franklin to his wife as a faithful helpmeet. Elsewhere in that work

we find this tribute too: "We have an English proverb that says, '_He that

would thrive, must ask his wife_.' It was lucky for me that I had one as

much dispos'd to industry and frugality as myself. She assisted me

chearfully in my business, folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop,

purchasing old linen rags for the paper-makers, etc., etc." His letters are

of the same tenor. In one to her after the repeal of the Stamp Act, he

wrote, "Had the Trade between the two Countries totally ceas'd, it was a

Comfort to me to recollect, that I had once been cloth'd from Head to Foot

in Woolen and Linnen of my Wife's Manufacture." Many years after Deborah's

death, he used these words in a letter to Miss Alexander: "Frugality is an

enriching Virtue; a Virtue I never could acquire in myself; but I was once

lucky enough to find it in a Wife, who thereby became a Fortune to me. Do

you possess it? If you do, and I were 20 Years younger, I would give your

Father 1,000 Guineas for you." And then he adds with the playful humor

which came to him as naturally as a carol to the throat of a blithe bird:

"I know you would be worth more to me as a Mennagere, but I am covetous,

and love good Bargains." Win an industrious and prudent wife, he declared

on another occasion, and, "if she does not _bring_ a fortune, she will

help to _make one_." And when his daughter Sally married Richard Bache, he

wrote to her that she could be as serviceable to her husband in keeping a

store, if it was where she dwelt, "as your Mother was to me: For you are

not deficient in Capacity, and I hope are not too proud." Sixteen years

after his marriage, in a rhyming preface to Poor Richard's _Almanac_, he

even penned this grateful jingle:

"Thanks to kind Readers and a careful Wife,

With plenty bless'd, I lead an easy Life."

Careful, however, as she had been in her earlier years, Deborah spent

enough, as she became older and more accustomed to easy living, to make him

feel that he should say a word of caution to her when the news reached him

in London that Sally was about to marry a young man who was not only

without fortune but soon to be involved in business failure. He advises her

not to make an "expensive feasting Wedding," but to conduct everything with

the economy required by their circumstances at that time; his partnership

with Hall having expired, and his loss of the Post Office not being

unlikely. In that event, he said, they would be reduced to their rents and

interest on money for a subsistence, which would by no means afford the

chargeable housekeeping and entertainments that they had been used to.

Though he himself lived as frugally as possible, making no dinners for

anybody, and contenting himself with a single dish, when he dined at home,

yet such was the dearness of living in London in every article that his

expenses amazed him.

I see too [he continued], by the Sums you have received

in my Absence, that yours are very great, and I am very

sensible that your Situation naturally brings you a

great many Visitors, which occasion an Expence not

easily to be avoided especially when one has been long

in the Practice and Habit of it. If we were young

enough to begin Business again [he remarks a little

later in this letter], it might be another Matter,--but

I doubt we are past it; and Business not well managed

ruins one faster than no Business. In short, with

Frugality and prudent Care we may subsist decently on

what we have, and leave it entire to our Children:--but

without such Care, we shall not be able to keep it

together; it will melt away like Butter in the

Sunshine; and we may live long enough to feel the

miserable Consequences of our Indiscretion.

Eighteen months later, with studied good-feeling, he tells her that, if he

does not send her a watch, it will be because the balance on his Post

Office account was greatly against him, owing to the large sums that she

had received. But Mrs. Franklin was failing, and a few years later, when

her memory and other faculties had been enfeebled by paralysis, he found it

necessary to give a keener edge to admonition in one of his letters to her.

Referring to her disgust with the Messrs. Foxcroft, because they had not

supplied her with money to pay for a bill of exchange for thirty pounds, he

opened his mind to her with almost cruel bluntness as follows:

That you may not be offended with your Neighbours

without Cause; I must acquaint you with what it seems

you did not know, that I had limited them in their

Payments to you, to the sum of Thirty Pounds per Month,

for the sake of our more easily settling, and to

prevent Mistakes. This making 360 Pounds a Year, I

thought, as you have no House Rent to pay yourself, and

receive the Rents of 7 or 8 Houses besides, might be

sufficient for the Maintenance of your Family. I judged

such a Limitation the more necessary, because you never

have sent me any Account of your Expences, and think

yourself ill-used if I desire it; and because I know

you were not very attentive to Money-matters in your

best Days, and I apprehend that your Memory is too much

impair'd for the Management of unlimited Sums, without

Danger of injuring the future Fortune of your daughter

and Grandson. If out of more than 500 L a Year, you

could have sav'd enough to buy those Bills it might

have been well to continue purchasing them. But I do

not like your going about among my Friends to borrow

Money for that purpose, especially as it is not at all

necessary. And therefore I once more request that you

would decline buying them for the future. And I hope

you will no longer take it amiss of Messrs. Foxcrofts

that they did not supply you. If what you receive is

really insufficient for your support satisfy me by

Accounts that it is so, and I shall order more.

Like an incision in the rind of a beech, which spreads wider and wider with

each passing year, is, as a rule, every human failing, as time goes on, and

poor Mrs. Franklin, now that senile decay was setting in, seems to have

been but another confirmation of this truth. But faithful wife that she

was, after the receipt of this letter from her husband, she was scrupulous

enough to send him receipts as well as accounts; for in the early part of

the succeeding year he writes to her: "I take notice of the considerable

Sums you have paid. I would not have you send me any Receipts. I am

satisfy'd with the Accounts you give." His letter to her about the

Foxcrofts was doubtless not more pointed than the occasion required. In no

scales was the salutary medicine of reproof ever weighed more exactly than

in his. This letter begins as usual, "My Dear Child," and, after conveying

its rebuke, lapses into the old happy, domestic strain. "I am much

pleased," he said, "with the little Histories you give me of your fine boy

(one of her grandsons) which are confirmed by all that have seen him. I

hope he will be spared and continue the same Pleasure and Comfort to you,

and that I shall ere long partake with you in it." One instance, perhaps,

of inattention to money-matters upon the part of Mrs. Franklin, which

helped to produce the climax of this letter, was in the case of a certain

Sarah Broughton, who, if we may judge from a single specimen of her spicy

humor, was something of a tartar. On July 1, 1766, she wrote to Franklin

that his wife owed her a certain sum of money and also the price of a bed,

which she had kept for two years, but now wanted to return, because there

had been a decline in the price of feathers. She had written, the writer

said, a letter to Mrs. Franklin on the subject, but had received the reply

from her "that she did not know me, and that I might write to you she was

an hegehog." "Now sir," continued Franklin's correspondent, "I don't think

her a hegehog but in reallity she has shot a great many quills at me, but

thank Heaven none of them has or can hurt me as I doubt not that your known

justice will induce you to order the above sum of seven pounds, seven

shillings payed." The keen eye that Mrs. Franklin had in this instance to

fluctuations in the market price of an article, which her husband and

herself had frequently bought and sold at their shop in the past, shows

plainly enough that, even when she was on the eve of her grand climacteric,

the thriftier instincts of her early life were not wholly dead. Nor does

she seem to have reserved all her quills for obdurate creditors. From the

Diary of Daniel Fisher we obtain the following entry:

As I was coming down from my chamber this afternoon a

gentlewoman was sitting on one of the lowest stairs

which were but narrow, and there not being room enough

to pass, she rose up and threw herself upon the floor

and sat there. Mr. Soumien and his wife gently

entreated her to arise and take a chair, but in vain;

she would keep her seat, and kept it, I think, the

longer for their entreaty. This gentlewoman, whom

though I had seen before I did not know, appeared to be

Mrs. Franklin. She assumed the airs of extraordinary

freedom and great humility, lamented heavily the

misfortunes of those who are unhappily infected with a

too tender or benevolent disposition, said she believed

all the world claimed a privilege of troubling her

Pappy (so she usually calls Mr. Franklin) with their

calamities and distresses, giving us a general history

of many such wretches and their impertinent

applications to him.

Just what all this meant is not entirely clear. Perhaps it was only real

sympathy excited by the harassments to which her husband, whom she

devotedly loved, was incessantly subjected by his public activity, his

reputation for wise counsel, and his ever-increasing renown. Perhaps it was

the mere jealousy of affection inspired by her sense of her own unfitness

in point of education and intellectual companionship to be the wife of a

man whose doorstep could be so haunted. After this incident the diarist

became Franklin's clerk, and lived in his house--a footing which enabled

him to give us a truer insight than we should otherwise have had as to the

extent to which William Franklin was at one time a festering thorn in the

side of Mrs. Franklin.

Mr. Soumien [Fisher diarizes] had often informed me of

great uneasiness and dissatisfaction in Mr. Franklin's

family in a manner no way pleasing to me, and which in

truth I was unwilling to credit, but as Mrs. Franklin

and I of late began to be friendly and sociable I

discerned too great grounds for Mr. Soumien's

reflection, arising solely from the turbulence and

jealousy and pride of her disposition. She suspecting

Mr. Franklin for having too great an esteem for his son

in prejudice of herself and daughter, a young woman of

about 12 or 13 years of age, for whom it was visible

Mr. Franklin had no less esteem than for his son young

Mr. Franklin. I have often seen him pass to and from

his father's apartment upon business (for he does not

eat, drink or sleep in the house) without the least

compliment between Mrs. Franklin and him or any sort of

notice taken of each other, till one day as I was

sitting with her in the passage when the young

gentleman came by she exclaimed to me (he not hearing):

"Mr. Fisher, there goes the greatest villain upon

earth." This greatly confounded and perplexed me, but

did not hinder her from pursuing her invectives in the

foulest terms I ever heard from a gentlewoman.

It is pleasant, however, to state that in time Deborah's dislike for

William Franklin seems to have considerably abated. In 1767, her husband

could write to her, "I am glad you go sometimes to Burlington. The Harmony

you mention in our Family and among our Children gives me great Pleasure."

And before this letter was written, William Franklin had availed himself of

an opportunity to testify his dutiful readiness to extend his protection to

her. It was when she had just taken possession of the new house, built by

her during her husband's absence in England, and his enemies, availing

themselves of the brief unpopularity incurred by him through recommending

his friend, John Hughes, as a stamp collector, had aroused the feeling

against him in Philadelphia to the point of rendering an attack upon this

house not improbable. As soon as William Franklin, then Governor of New

Jersey, heard of the danger, to which his father's wife and daughter were

exposed, he hastened to Philadelphia to offer them a refuge under his own

roof at Burlington. Mrs. Franklin permitted her daughter to accept the

offer, but undauntedly refused to accept it herself. This is her own

account of the matter to her husband divested of its illiteracy.

I was for nine days [she said] kept in a continual

hurry by people to remove, and Sally was persuaded to

go to Burlington for safety. Cousin Davenport came and

told me that more than twenty people had told him it

was his duty to be with me. I said I was pleased to

receive civility from anybody; so he staid with me some

time; towards night I said he should fetch a gun or

two, as we had none. I sent to ask my brother to come

and bring his gun also, so we turned one room into a

magazine; I ordered some sort of defense upstairs, such

as I could manage myself. I said, when I was advised to

remove, that I was very sure you had done nothing to

hurt anybody, nor had I given any offense to any person

at all, nor would I be made uneasy by anybody; nor

would I stir or show the least uneasiness, but if any

one came to disturb me I would show a proper

resentment. I was told that there were eight hundred

men ready to assist any one that should be molested.

Indeed, after his marriage, the correspondence of William Franklin

indicates that, if the relations of Mrs. Franklin to him were not

altogether what Franklin would fain have had them, that is the relations of

Hagar rather than of Sarah, he at least bore himself towards her with a

marked degree of respectful consideration. His letters to her were

subscribed, "Your ever dutiful son," and, in a letter to his father, he

informs him that he and his wife were "on a visit to my mother." When

Deborah died, he was the "chief mourner" in the funeral procession, and, in

a subsequent letter to his father, he speaks of her as "my poor old

mother." After the paralytic stroke, which "greatly affected her memory and

understanding," William Franklin expressed the opinion that she should have

"some clever body to take care of her," because, he said, she "becomes

every day more and more unfit to be left alone." No cleverer body for the

purpose, of course, could be found than her own daughter, who came with her

husband to reside with and take care of her. In his letter to Franklin

announcing her death, William Franklin used these feeling words: "She told

me when I took leave of her on my removal to Amboy, that she never expected

to see you unless you returned this winter, for that she was sure she

should not live till next summer. I heartily wish you had happened to have

come over in the fall, as I think her disappointment in that respect preyed

a good deal on her spirits." Poor Richard's _Almanac_ had sayings, it is

hardly necessary to declare, suitable for such an occasion. "There are

three faithful friends; an old wife, an old dog, and ready money." "A good

wife lost is God's gift lost."

In the light of what we have narrated, it is obvious that there were

occasions in Franklin's nuptial life when it was well that he was a

philosopher as well as a husband. "You can bear with your own Faults, and

why not a fault in your Wife?," is a question that he is known to have

asked at least once, and he did not have to leave his own doorstep to find

an application for his injunction, "Keep your eyes wide open before

marriage, half shut afterwards." But if there was defect of temper there

was never any defect of devotion upon the part of the jealous,

high-spirited, courageous wife. It is true that she had no place in the

wider sphere of her husband's existence. She did not concern herself even

about such a political controversy as that over the Stamp Tax except to say

like the leal wife she was that she was sure that her husband had not done

anything to hurt anybody.

You are very prudent [he said to her on one occasion]

not to engage in Party Disputes. Women never should

meddle with them except in Endeavour to reconcile their

Husbands, Brothers, and Friends, who happen to be of

contrary Sides. If your Sex can keep cool, you may be a

means of cooling ours the sooner, and restoring more

speedily that social Harmony among Fellow-Citizens,

that is so desirable after long and bitter Dissensions.

Her interest in her husband's electrical studies probably ceased when he

wrote to her as follows with reference to the two bells that he had placed

in his house in such a position as to ring when an iron rod with which they

were connected was electrified by a storm cloud: "If the ringing of the

Bells frightens you, tie a Piece of Wire from one Bell to the other, and

that will conduct the lightning without ringing or snapping, but silently."

She never became equal even to such social standing as her husband acquired

for himself by his talents and usefulness in Philadelphia; and she would

have been a serious clog upon him in the social circles to which he was

admitted in Great Britain and on the Continent, if her aversion to crossing

the ocean had not been insurmountable. Her letters are marked by a degree

of illiteracy that make the task of reading them almost like the task of

reading an unfamiliar foreign tongue; but it should be recollected that in

the eighteenth century in America it was entirely possible for a person to

be at once illiterate and a lady. Even Franklin with his _penchant_ for

simplified spelling must have felt, after meditating some of Deborah's

written words, that the orthographical line had to be drawn somewhere. The

following letter from her to her husband, dated October ye 29, 1773, and

transcribed exactly as written is neither better nor worse than the rest of

her epistles to her husband:

My Dear Child:--I have bin verey much distrest aboute

you as I did not aney letter nor one word from you nor

did I hear one word from oney bodey that you wrote to

so I muste submit and inde (?) to submit to what I am

to bair I did write by Capt Folkner to you but he is

gon down and when I read it over I did not lik t and so

if this donte send it I shante like it as I donte send

you aney news now I dont go abrode.

I shall tell you what Consernes my selef our youngest

Grandson is the foreed child us a live he has had the

Small Pox and had it very fine and got a brod a gen.

Capt All will tell you aboute him and Benj Franklin

Beache, but as it is so difficall to writ I have deserd

him to tell you, I have sent a squerel for your friend

and wish her better luck it is a very fine one I have

had very bad luck they one kild and another run a way

all thow they are bred up tame I have not a Caige as I

donte know where the man lives that makes them my love

to Salley Franklin my love to all our Cusins as thow

menshond remember me to Mr. and Mrs. Weste doe you ever

hear anything of Ninely Evans as was.[16]

I thanke you for the silke and hat it at the womons to

make it up but have it put up as you wrote (torn) I

thonke it it is very prittey; what was the prise? I

desier to give my love to everybodey (torn) I shold

love Billey was in town 5 or 6 day when the child was

in the small pox Mr. Franklin (torn) not sene him yit I

am to tell a verey pritey thing about Ben the players

is cume to town and they am to ackte on Munday he

wanted to see a play he unkill Beache had given him a

doler his mama asked him wuther he wold give it for a

ticket, or buy his Brother a neckles he sed his Brother

a necklas he is a charmm child as ever was Borne my

Grand cheldren are the Best in the world Sally will

write I cante write aney mor I am your a feckshone

wife,

D. FRANKLIN.

But, in spite of the qualifications we have stated, there was a place after

all, even aside from the joint care of the shop, in which the pair throve

so swimmingly together, that Deborah could occupy in the thoughts of a man

with such quick, strong affections, such liberality of mind and such a keen

interest in the ordinary concerns of life as we find in Franklin. This

place becomes manifest enough when we read the letters that passed between

the two.

A more considerate, loving wife than these letters show her to have been it

would be hard to conceive. Napoleon said of his marshals that only one of

them loved him, the others loved the Emperor. The devotion of Deborah to

her husband is all the more noteworthy because it appears to have been but

slightly, if at all, influenced by his public distinction. Her attachment

was to Franklin himself, the early lover with whom she had "interchanged

promises" when but a girl, and who, after deserting her for a time, had

come back to her in her desolation like day returning to the dark and

lonely night, the business comrade to whom her industry and prudence had

proved in effect a fortune, the most admired and beloved man in the circle

of her social relationships, the patient, dutiful, affectionate friend and

husband, the father of her daughter and son. Inarticulate as were her

struggles with syntax and orthography, she was to him the most faithful of

correspondents. Long after she had reached an age when the fond diminutives

of early married life are usually exchanged for soberer language, she

addressed him in her letters as "My Dear Child," and sometimes as "My

Dearest Dear Child." "I am set down to confab a little with my dear child,"

was the way in which she began one of her letters, "Adue my dear child, and

take care of your selef for mamey's sake as well as your one," was the way

in which she ended another. So frequently, too, did she write to him when

they were separated from each other that he repeatedly acknowledged in his

replies her extraordinary constancy as a correspondent; on one occasion

writing to her: "I think nobody ever had more faithful Correspondents than

I have in Mr. Hughes and you.... It is impossible for me to get or keep out

of your Debts." When they had been married over twenty-seven years, he

thanks her in one of his letters for writing to him so frequently and

fully, and, when they had been married nearly forty years, he wrote to her

that he thought that she was the most punctual of all his correspondents.

And not only did she write often enough to him to elicit these

acknowledgments, but her letters afford ample evidence that to lack a

letter from him when she expected one was nothing less than a bitter

disappointment to her. "I know," he said in a letter to her, "you love to

have a Line from me by every Packet, so I write, tho' I have little to

say." We have already seen how her failure to hear from, or of, him led her

on one occasion to end her plaint with words strong enough to express

resignation to the very worst trial to which human life is subject. On

another occasion she wrote: "Aprill 7 this day is Cumpleet 5 munthes senes

you lefte your one House I did reseve a letter from the Capes senes that

not one line I due supose that you did write by the packit but that is not

arived yit." The same hunger for everything that related to him, no matter

how trivial, finds utterance in her petition in another letter that he

_wold_ tell her _hough_ his poor _armes was_ and _hough_ he was on his

_voiag_ and _hough_ he _air_ and _everey_ thing is with him _wich_ she

wanted _verey_ much to know. Nor did her affection limit itself to letters.

Whenever he was absent from her and stationary whether at Gnadenhutten, or

London, his table was never wanting in something to remind him of home and

of the attentive wife whose domestic virtues in spite of her deficiencies

of education gave home so much of its meaning.

We have enjoyed your roast beef [he wrote to her from

Gnadenhutten] and this day began on the roast veal. All

agree that they are both the best that ever were of the

kind. Your citizens, that have their dinners hot and

hot, know nothing of good eating. We find it in much

greater perfection when the kitchen is four score miles

from the dining room.

The apples are extremely welcome, and do bravely to eat

after our salt pork; the minced pies are not yet come

to hand, but I suppose we shall find them among the

things expected up from Bethlehem on Tuesday; the

capillaire is excellent, but none of us having taken

cold as yet, we have only tasted it.

Other letters of his written from Gnadenhutten testify that she missed no

opportunity, so long as he was in the wilderness, to send him something

better than the salt pork, to which her apples were such a brave sequel, to

relieve the harsh privations of camp life for himself and his brother

officers. He tells her in one of his letters that all the gentlemen send

their compliments. "They drink your health at every meal, having always

something on the table to put them in mind of you." Even when the Atlantic

was between them, his life was kept continually refreshed by the same

bountiful stream of supplies. A menu, made up of the items that she sent

him, might well have softened the heart of even such a rank, swashbuckling

enemy of the American Colonies as Dr. Johnson, who loved a good dinner even

more than he hated the Americans. Dried venison, bacon, smoked beef,

apples, cranberries, nuts, Indian and buckwheat meal, and peaches, dried

with and without their skins, are all mentioned in his acknowledgments of

her favors. Some of the nuts and apples he presented on one occasion to

Lord and Lady Bathurst "a very great lady, the best woman in England,"

accompanied by a brief note which borrowed the point of its graceful

pleasantry from the effort of Great Britain to tax the Colonies without

their consent:

"Dr. Franklin presents his respectful compliments to Lord Bathurst, with

some American nuts; and to Lady Bathurst, with some American apples; which

he prays they will accept as a tribute from that country, small indeed, but

_voluntary_."

Franklin's first absence from his wife in England lasted some five years,

his second some ten; and such was Deborah's passionate attachment to him

that it can scarcely be doubted that, if he had not, during these periods

of absence, cheated himself and her from year to year with the idea that

his business would soon permit him to return to Philadelphia, she would

have joined him despite her aversion to the sea. This aversion was natural

enough under the maritime conditions of that time; for even Franklin, whose

numerous transatlantic voyages were usually attended by fair weather, and

who was an uncommonly resourceful sailor, left behind him the statement

that he never crossed the ocean without vowing that he would do so no

more.[17] As it was, the frequently recurring expectation upon her part

that a few months more would restore her husband to his home checked any

thought that she may have had of making a voyage to England. There is no

evidence that she ever harbored any such intention. An interesting feature

of Franklin's life in England in his maturer years is the effort of his

friend Strahan to induce Mrs. Franklin to come over to that country with

Sally and to take up her permanent residence there with her husband. As to

Sally, it began with the half jocular, half serious, proposal from Franklin

to Strahan, before the former left Pennsylvania for London in 1757, that

Sally, then but a mere child, and Strahan's son should make a match of it.

"Please to acquaint him," Franklin asked of Strahan on one occasion, after

saying that he was glad to hear so good a character of his son-in-law,

"that his spouse grows finely and will probably have an agreeable person.

That with the best natural disposition in the world, she discovers daily

the seeds and tokens of industry, economy, and, in short, of every female

virtue, which her parents will endeavour to cultivate for him." Some years

later he added that Sally was indeed a very good girl, affectionate,

dutiful and industrious, had one of the best hearts, and though not a wit,

was, for one of her years, by no means deficient in understanding. Many

years later, after time and the cares of motherhood had told on her, a keen

observer, Manasseh Cutler, is so ungallant as to speak of this daughter as

"a very gross and rather homely lady," but there is evidence that, even if

she was never the superbly handsome woman that James Parton says she was,

yet in the soft bloom of her young womanhood the prediction of her father

that she would have an agreeable person was unquestionably fulfilled.

When Franklin passed over to England as the agent of the people of

Pennsylvania, Strahan became so fond of him that an earnest effort to fix

the whole family in England as a permanent place of residence followed

almost as a matter of course, and he not only formally opened up his

feelings on the subject to Franklin but indited a letter to Mrs. Franklin

which he appears to have believed would prove an irresistible masterpiece

of persuasive eloquence. This letter is one of the topics upon which

Franklin repeatedly touches in his correspondence with Deborah. In a letter

to her of January 14, 1758, he tells her that their friend Strahan had

offered to lay him a considerable wager that a letter that Strahan had

written would bring her immediately over to England, but that he had told

Strahan that he would not pick his pocket, for he was sure that there was

no inducement strong enough to prevail with her to cross the seas. Later he

wrote to her, "Your Answer to Mr. Strahan was just what it should be. I was

much pleas'd with it. He fancy'd his Rhetoric and Art would certainly bring

you over." Finding that he was unable himself to persuade Mrs. Franklin to

settle down in England, Strahan urged Franklin to try his hand, and the

letter in which Franklin reports this fact to his wife makes it apparent

enough that Strahan had the matter deeply at heart.

He was very urgent with me [says Franklin] to stay in

England and prevail with you to remove hither with

Sally. He propos'd several advantageous Schemes to me,

which appear'd reasonably founded. His Family is a very

agreeable one; Mrs. Strahan a sensible and good Woman,

the Children of amiable Characters, and particularly

the young Man (who is) sober, ingenious and

industrious, and a (desirable) Person. In Point of

Circumstances there can be no Objection; Mr. Strahan

being (now) living in a Way as to lay up a Thousand

Pounds every Year from the Profits of his Business,

after maintaining his Family and paying all Charges. I

gave him, however, two Reasons why I could not think of

removing hither, One, my Affection to Pennsilvania and

long established Friendships and other connections

there: The other, your invincible Aversion to crossing

the Seas. And without removing hither, I could not

think of parting with my Daughter to such a Distance. I

thank'd him for the Regard shown us in the Proposal,

but gave him no Expectation that I should forward the

Letters. So you are at liberty to answer or not, as you

think proper. Let me however know your Sentiments. You

need not deliver the Letter to Sally, if you do not

think it proper.

She did answer, but we are left to infer from a subsequent letter from

Franklin to her, in which he alludes to this letter of hers, that, if

Strahan was disappointed by his failure to bring about the migration of the

Franklins, his disappointment was largely swallowed up in the shock

experienced by his literary vanity in finding that his elaborate appeal had

not drawn her over. We cannot share his disappointment, whatever it was,

when we recollect that to Sally's marriage to Richard Bache we are indebted

for more than one descendant of Franklin whose talents and public services

have won an honorable place in the history of the nation.

It is gratifying to state that no one can read either Franklin's letters to

Deborah or to other persons without feeling unqualifiedly assured that he

entertained a sincere and profound affection for the good wife whose heart

was for nearly fifty years fastened upon him and his every want with such

solicitous tenderness. His married life was distinguished to such an

eminent degree by the calm, pure flow of domestic happiness that for that

reason, if for no other, we find it impossible to reconcile ourselves to

the protean facility with which, in his old age, he yielded to the

seductions of French love-making. The interval, to say the least, is long

between the honest apples, which his own good American wife sent him from

time to time, when he was in London, and the meretricious apples which

Madame Brillon thought that "King John" i. e. M. Brillon might be decent

enough to offer to some extent to his neighbors when they were all together

in Paradise where we shall want for nothing. If one wishes fully to realize

how little fettered was the mind of Franklin by local ideals and

conventions and how quick it was, like the changeful face of the sea, to

mirror all its external relations, one has but to read first Franklin's

letters to his wife, as thoroughly Anglo-Saxon as any ever penned in an

English manse, and then his letters to Madame Brillon, and the exquisite

bagatelle, as thoroughly French as the Abbe Morellet's "Humble Petition

presented to Madam Helvetius by her Cats," in which he told Madame

Helvetius of the new connection formed by Deborah with M. Helvetius in the

Elysian Fields. There is every reason to believe that Franklin's marriage

vow was never dishonored during Deborah's life, lax as his conduct was

before his marriage and lax as his diction at least was after her death. In

the Diary from which we have already quoted quite liberally, Fisher, after

narrating the extraordinary manner in which Deborah bewailed the troubles

of her "Pappy," observes, "Mr. Franklin's moral character is good, and he

and Mrs. Franklin live irreproachably as man and wife." Franklin's loyalty

to his wife is also evidenced by a letter from Strahan to Deborah in which

he uses these words:

For my own part, I never saw a man who was, in every

respect, so perfectly agreeable to me. Some are amiable

in one view, some in another, he in all. Now Madam, as

I know the ladies here consider him in exactly the same

light I do, upon my word I think you should come over,

with all convenient speed, to look after your interest;

not but that I think him as faithful to his Joan as any

man breathing; but who knows what repeated and strong

temptation may in time, and while he is at so great a

distance from you, accomplish?

This interrogatory was, perhaps, the rhetorical stroke upon which Strahan

relied to give the _coup de grace_ to Mrs. Franklin's abhorrence of the

sea. It was certainly calculated to set a jealous-minded wife to thinking.

But it seems to have had as little effect upon Deborah as the other

artifices of this masterly letter. The terms "his Joan" in it were

doubtless suggested by Franklin's song, _My Plain Country Joan_, one verse

of which, as good, or rather as bad, as the rest, was as follows:

"Some faults we have all, and so has my Joan,

But then they're exceedingly small;

And, now I am used, they are like my own,

I scarcely can see 'em at all,

My dear friends,

I scarcely can see 'em at all."

Another indication of the marital fidelity of which Strahan speaks is found

in a letter from Franklin to Deborah after his second return from England

in which he said: "I approve of your opening all my English Letters, as it

must give you Pleasure to see that People who knew me there so long and so

intimately, retain so sincere a Regard for me." But it would be grossly

unjust to Franklin to measure the degree of his attachment to his Joan by

the fact merely that he preserved inviolate the nuptial pledge which a man

of honor can fairly be expected as a matter of course to observe

scrupulously. Not only the lines just quoted by us but the general

character of his married life demonstrates that the only thing that he ever

regretted about his intercourse with Deborah was that his own censurable

conduct should have made her for a time the wife of anyone but himself.

In his correspondence with his friend Catherine Ray, there are two pleasing

references to Deborah.

Mrs. Franklin [one reads] was very proud, that a young

lady should have so much regard for her old husband, as

to send him such a present (a cheese). We talk of you

every time it comes to table. She is sure you are a

sensible girl, and a notable housewife, and talks of

bequeathing me to you as a legacy; but I ought to wish

you a better, and hope she will live these hundred

years; for we are grown old together, and if she has

any faults, I am so used to 'em that I don't perceive

'em; as the song says [and then, after quoting from his

_Plain Country Joan_ the stanza which we have quoted,

he adds:]. Indeed, I begin to think she has none, as I

think of you. And since she is willing I should love

you, as much as you are willing to be loved by me, let

us join in wishing the old lady a long life and a

happy.

The other reference to Deborah occurs in a letter to Miss Ray, written

after Franklin's return from a recent visit to New England, in which he

describes his feelings before reaching Philadelphia. "As I drew nearer," he

said, "I found the attraction stronger and stronger. My diligence and speed

increased with my impatience. I drove on violently, and made such long

stretches, that a very few days brought me to my own house, and to the arms

of my good old wife and children."

It is to Franklin's own letters to his wife, however, that we must resort

to appreciate how fully he reciprocated her affection. Illiterate as her

letters were, they were so full of interest to him that he seems to have

re-read as well as read them. In one letter to her, for example, after his

arrival in England in 1757, he tells her, "I have now gone through all your

agreeable letters, which give me fresh pleasure every time I read them."

And that he was quick to feel the dearth of such letters we have testimony

in the form of a playful postscript to one of his letters to her of the

preceding year when he was at Easton, Pennsylvania. The special messenger,

he said, that had been dispatched to Philadelphia with a letter from him to

her, as well as letters from other persons to their wives and sweethearts,

had returned "without a scrap for poor us."

The messenger says [he continues] he left the letters

at your house, and saw you afterwards at Mr. Duche's,

and told you when he would go, and that he lodged at

Honey's, next door to you, and yet you did not write;

so let Goody Smith (a favorite servant of theirs) give

one more just judgment, and say what should be done to

you. I think I won't tell you that we are well, nor

that we expect to return about the middle of the week,

nor will I send you a word of news; that's poz.

The letter ends, "I am your _loving_ husband"; and then comes the

postscript: "I have _scratched out the loving words_, being writ in haste

by mistake, _when I forgot I was angry_."

His letters to her bear all the tokens of conjugal love and of a deep,

tranquil domestic spirit. At times, he addresses her as "My Dear Debby,"

and once as "My Dear Love," but habitually as "My Dear Child." This was the

form of address in the first of his published letters to her dated December

27, 1755, and in his last, dated July 22, 1774. "I am, dear girl, your

loving husband," "I am, my dear Debby, your ever loving husband," are among

the forms of expression with which he concludes. The topics of his letters

are almost wholly personal or domestic. They illustrate very strikingly how

little dependent upon intellectual congeniality married happiness is,

provided that there is a mutual sense of duty, mutual respect and a real

community of domestic interests.

In one of his London letters, he informs her that another French

translation of his book had just been published, with a print of himself

prefixed, which, though a copy of that by Chamberlin, had so French a

countenance that she would take him for one of that lively nation. "I think

you do not mind such things," he added, "or I would send you one."[18] To

politics he rarely refers except to reassure her when uneasiness had been

created in her mind by one of the reckless partisan accusations which

husbands in public life soon learn to rate at their real value but their

wives never do. "I am concern'd that so much Trouble should be given you by

idle Reports concerning me," he says on one occasion. "Be satisfied, my

dear, that while I have my Senses, and God vouchsafes me this Protection, I

shall do nothing unworthy the Character of an honest Man, and one that

loves his Family."

As a rule his letters to Deborah have little to say about the larger world

in which he moved when he was in England. If he refers to the Royal Family,

it is only to mention that the Queen had just been delivered of another

Prince, the eighth child, and that there were now six princes and two

princesses, all lovely children. After the repeal of the Stamp Act lifted

the embargo laid by patriotic Americans on importations of clothing from

England, he wrote to Deborah that he was willing that she should have a new

gown, and that he had sent her fourteen yards of Pompadour satin. He had

told Parliament, he stated, that, before the old clothes of the Americans

were worn out, they might have new ones of their own making. "And, indeed,"

he added, "if they had all as many old Cloathes as your old Man has, that

would not be very unlikely, for I think you and George reckon'd when I was

last at home at least 20 pair of old Breeches." To his own fame and the

social attentions which he received from distinguished men abroad he makes

only the most meagre allusion.

The agreeable conversation I meet with among men of

learning, and the notice taken of me by persons of

distinction, are the principal things that soothe me

for the present, under this painful absence from my

family and friends. Yet those would not keep me here

another week, if I had not other inducements; duty to

my country, and hopes of being able to do it service.

Thus he wrote to his wife about four months after he arrived in England in

1757. A few weeks later, he said:

I begin to think I shall hardly be able to return

before this time twelve months. I am for doing

effectually what I came about; and I find it requires

both time and patience. You may think, perhaps, that I

can find many amusements here to pass the time

agreeable. 'Tis true, the regard and friendship I meet

with from persons of worth, and the conversation of

ingenious men, give me no small pleasure; but at this

time of life, domestic comforts afford the most solid

satisfaction, and my uneasiness at being absent from my

family, and longing desire to be with them, make me

often sigh in the midst of cheerful company.[19]

The real interest of Franklin's correspondence with his wife consists in

the insight that it gives us into his private, as contrasted with his

public, relations. His genius, high as it rose into the upper air of human

endeavor, rested upon a solid sub-structure of ordinary stone and cement,

firmly planted in the earth, and this is manifest in his family history as

in everything else. The topics, with which he deals in his letters to

Deborah, are the usual topics with which a kind, sensible, practical

husband and householder, without any elevated aspirations of any kind,

deals in his letters to his wife. There was no lack of common ground on

which she and he could meet in correspondence after the last fond words

addressed by him to her just before he left New York for England in 1757

had been spoken, "God preserve, guard and guide you." First of all, there

was his daughter Sally to whom he was lovingly attached. In a letter to his

wife, shortly before he used the valedictory words just quoted, he said: "I

leave Home, and undertake this long Voyage more chearfully, as I can rely

on your Prudence in the Management of my Affairs, and Education of my dear

Child; and yet I cannot forbear once more recommending her to you with a

Father's tenderest Concern." From this time on, during his two absences in

England, Sally seems to have ever been in his thoughts. There are several

references to her in one of his earliest letters to Deborah after he

reached England in 1757.

I should have read Sally's French letter with more

pleasure [he said], but that I thought the French

rather too good to be all her own composing.... I send

her a French Pamela. I hear [he further said] there has

a miniature painter gone over to Philadelphia, a

relation to John Reynolds. If Sally's picture is not

done to your mind by the young man, and the other

gentleman is a good hand and follows the business,

suppose you get Sally's done by him, and send it to me

with your small picture, that I may here get all our

little family drawn in one conversation piece.

This idea was not carried out because, among other reasons, as he

subsequently informed Deborah, he found that family pieces were no longer

in fashion.[20] In this same letter there is a gentle caress for Sally.

Had I been well [he said], I intended to have gone

round among the shops and bought some pretty things for

you and my dear good Sally (whose little hands you say

eased your headache) to send by this ship, but I must

now defer it to the next, having only got a crimson

satin cloak for you, the newest fashion, and the black

silk for Sally; but Billy (William Franklin) sends her

a scarlet feather, muff, and tippet, and a box of

fashionable linen for her dress.

In other letters there are repeated indications of the doting persistency

with which his mind dwelt upon his daughter. But the softest touch of all

is at the end of one of them. After speaking of the kindness, with which

Mrs. Stevenson, Polly Stevenson's mother, had looked after his physical

welfare, he adds: "But yet I have a thousand times wish'd you with me, and

my little Sally with her ready Hands and Feet to do, and go, and come, and

get what I wanted." All these allusions to Sally are found in his letters

to Deborah during his first mission to England. But little Sally was

growing apace, and, when he returned to England on his second mission in

1764, there was soon to be another person with an equal, if not a superior,

claim upon her helpful offices. We have already quoted from his letter to

Deborah warning her against "an expensive feasting wedding." In this letter

he says of Sally's fiance, Richard Bache:

I know very little of the Gentleman or his Character,

nor can I at this Distance. I hope his Expectations are

not great of any Fortune to be had with our Daughter

before our Death. I can only say, that if he proves a

good Husband to her, and a good Son to me, he shall

find me as good a Father as I can be:--but at present I

suppose you would agree with me, that we cannot do more

than fit her out handsomely in Cloaths and Furniture,

not exceeding in the whole Five Hundred Pounds, of

Value. For the rest, they must depend as you and I did,

on their own Industry and Care: as what remains in our

Hands will be barely sufficient for our Support, and

not enough for them when it comes to be divided at our

Decease.

Hardly, however, had the betrothal occurred before it was clouded by

business reverses which had overtaken the prospective son-in-law. These led

to a suggestion from the father that may or may not have been prompted by

the thought that a temporary separation might bring about the termination

of an engagement marked by gloomy auspices.

In your last letters [he wrote to Deborah], you say

nothing concerning Mr. Bache. The Misfortune that has

lately happened to his Affairs, tho' it may not lessen

his Character as an honest or a Prudent man, will

probably induce him to forbear entering hastily into a

State that must require a great Addition to his

Expence, when he will be less able to supply it. If you

think that in the meantime it will be some Amusement to

Sally to visit her Friends here (in London) and return

with me, I should have no Objection to her coming over

with Capt. Falkener, provided Mrs. Falkener comes at

the same time as is talk'd of. I think too it might be

some Improvement to her.

Poor Richard had incurred considerable risks when he selected his own mate,

and, all things considered, he acquiesced gracefully enough in the

betrothal of his daughter to a man of whom he knew practically nothing

except circumstances that were calculated to bring to his memory many pat

proverbs about the folly of imprudent marriages. If, therefore, his idea

was to enlist the chilling aid of absence in an effort to bring the

engagement to an end, fault can scarcely be found with him. We know from

one of William Franklin's letters that the friends of the family had such

misgivings about the union as to excite the anger of Deborah. The

suggestion that Sally should be sent over to England did not find favor

with her, and in a later letter Franklin writes to her, "I am glad that you

find so much reason to be satisfy'd with Mr. Bache. I hope all will prove

for the best." And all did prove for the best, as the frequency with which

Richard Bache's name occurs in Franklin's will, to say nothing more,

sufficiently attests. When the marriage was solemnized, Franklin's strong

family affection speedily crowned it with his full approval. In due season,

the fact that the contract was a fruitful one is brought to our notice by a

letter from him to his wife in which he tells his "Dear Child," then his

wife for nearly forty years, that he had written to Sally by Captain

Falkener giving her Sir John Pringle's opinion as to the probability of

Sally's son having been rendered exempt from the smallpox by inoculation.

Thenceforth there is scarcely a letter from the grandfather to the

grandmother in which there is not some mention made of this grandson,

Benjamin Franklin Bache, the rabid Jeffersonian and editor of after years,

whose vituperative editorials in the Aurora recall Franklin's statement in

the latter part of his life that the liberty of the press ought to be

attended by the ancient liberty of the cudgel. "I am glad your little

Grandson," says one letter, "recovered so soon of his Illness, as I see you

are quite in Love with him, and your Happiness wrapt up in his; since your

whole long Letter is made up of the History of his pretty Actions." In a

subsequent letter to Deborah, he passes to the boy's father, who had come

over to England, where his mother and sisters resided, and was on the point

of returning to Philadelphia. "Mr. Bache is about returning. His Behaviour

here has been very agreeable to me. I have advis'd him to settle down to

Business in Philadelphia, where I hope he will meet with Success. I

mentioned to you before, that I saw his Mother and Sisters at Preston, who

are genteel People, and extreamly agreeable." In the same letter, he tells

Deborah that he has advised Bache to deal in the ready money way though he

should sell less.

He may keep his Store [he said] in your little North

Room for the present. And as he will be at no expence

while the Family continues with you, I think he may,

with Industry and Frugality, get so forward, as at the

end of his Term, to pay his Debts and be clear of the

World, which I much wish to see. I have given him L200

Sterl'g to add something to his Cargo.

It is not long before he is writing to Deborah about "Sister Bache and her

amiable Daughters." Like the commerce of material gifts, which his wife and

himself kept up with each other, when separated, are the details about his

godson, William Hewson, the son of his friend Polly, which he exchanges

with Deborah for details about his grandson, who came to be known, it

seems, as "the Little King Bird," and the "Young Hercules."

In Return for your History of your _Grandson_ [he wrote

to her on one occasion], I must give you a little of

the History of my _Godson_. He is now 21 Months old,

very strong and healthy, begins to speak a little, and

even to sing. He was with us a few Days last Week, grew

fond of me, and would not be contented to sit down to

Breakfast without coming to call _Pa_, rejoicing when

he had got me into my Place. When seeing me one Day

crack one of the Philada Biscuits into my Tea with the

Nut-crackers, he took another and try'd to do the same

with the Tea-Tongs. It makes me long to be at home to

play with Ben.

Indeed, by this time, Franklin had become such a fatuous grandfather that

he ceases to call his grandson Ben and speaks of him as "Benny Boy" when

he does not speak of him as "the dear boy."

In the fulness of time, Richard and Sally Bache were destined to be the

parents of numerous children. When Franklin returned from his mission to

France, the youngest of them soon became as devoted to him as had been

Billy Hewson, or the youthful son of John Jay, whose singular attachment to

him is referred to in one of his letters to Jay. In the same description,

in which Manasseh Cutler speaks in such sour terms of the person of Mrs.

Bache, he tells us that, when he saw her at Franklin's home in

Philadelphia, she had three of her children about her, over whom she seemed

to have no kind of command, but who appeared to be excessively fond of

their grandpapa. Indeed, all children who were brought into close

companionship with Franklin loved him, and instinctively turned to him for

responsive love and sympathy. Men may be the best judges of the human

intellect, but children are the best judges of the human heart.

Francis Folger, the only legitimate child of Franklin except Sally, is not

mentioned in his correspondence with his wife. The colorless Franky who is

was not this child. Franklin's son was born a year after the marriage of

Franklin and Deborah in 1730, and died, when a little more than four years

of age, and therefore long before the date of the earliest letter extant

from Franklin to Deborah. Though warned but a few years previously by an

epidemic of smallpox in Philadelphia, which had been accompanied by a high

rate of mortality, Franklin could not make up his mind to subject the child

to the hazards of inoculation. The consequence was that, when a second

epidemic visited the city, Francis contracted the disease, and died.

Franklin, to use his own words to his sister Jane Mecom, long regretted him

bitterly, and also regretted that he had not given him the disease by

inoculation.

All, who have seen my grandson [he said in another

letter to his sister] agree with you in their accounts

of his being an uncommonly fine boy, which brings often

afresh to my mind the idea of my son Franky, though now

dead thirty-six years, whom I have seldom since seen

equaled in every thing, and whom to this day I cannot

think of without a sigh.

But Sally and his grandson were far from being the only persons who

furnished material for Franklin's letters to his wife. These letters also

bring before us in many ways other persons connected with him and Deborah

by ties of blood, service or friendship. He repeatedly sends his "duty" to

his mother-in-law, Mrs. Read, and when he is informed of the death of "our

good mother," as he calls her, he observes, "'Tis, I am sure, a

Satisfaction to me, that I cannot charge myself with having ever fail'd in

one Instance of Duty and Respect to her during the many Years that she

call'd me Son." "My love to Brother John Read and Sister, and cousin

Debbey, and young cousin Johnny Read, and let them all know, that I

sympathize with them all affectionately," was his message to her relations

in the same letter.

Some of his letters conveyed much agreeable information to Deborah about

his and her English relations. Of these we shall have something to say in

another connection.

"Billy," William Franklin, is mentioned in his father's letters to Deborah

on many other occasions than those already cited by us; for he was his

father's intimate companion during the whole of the first mission to

England. He appears to have truly loved his sister, Sally, and is often

mentioned in Franklin's letters to Deborah as sending Sally his love or

timely gifts. If he really presented his duty to his mother half as often

as Franklin reported, she had no cause to complain of his lack of

attention. That her earlier feelings about him had undergone a decided

change, before he went to England with his father, we may infer from one

of Franklin's letters in which, in response to her "particular inquiry," he

tells her that "Billy is of the Middle Temple, and will be call'd to the

Bar either this Term or the next." Some seven years later, he tells her

that it gave him pleasure to hear from Major Small that he had left her and

Sally and "our other children" well also.

Mention of Peter, his negro servant, is also several times made in

Franklin's letters to Deborah. In one letter, written when he was

convalescing after a severe attack of illness, he tells Deborah that not

only had his good doctor, Doctor Fothergill, attended him very carefully

and affectionately, and Mrs. Stevenson nursed him kindly, but that Billy

was of great service to him, and Peter very diligent and attentive. But a

later letter does not give quite so favorable a view of Peter, after the

latter had inhaled a little longer the free air of England.

Peter continues with me [said Franklin] and behaves as

well as I can expect, in a Country where they are many

Occasions of spoiling servants, if they are ever so

good. He has a few Faults as most of them, and I see

with only one Eye, and hear only with one Ear; so we

rub on pretty comfortably.

These words smack of the uxorious policy recommended to husbands by Poor

Richard. The same letter gives us a glimpse of another negro servant, who

was even more strongly disposed than Peter to act upon the statement in

Cowper's _Task_ that slaves cannot breathe in England.

King, that you enquire after [says Franklin], is not

with us. He ran away from our House, near two Years

ago, while we were absent in the Country; But was soon

found in Suffolk, where he had been taken in the

Service of a Lady, that was very fond of the Merit of

making him a Christian, and contributing to his

Education and Improvement. As he was of little Use, and

often in Mischief, Billy consented to her keeping him

while we stay in England. So the Lady sent him to

School, has taught him to read and write, to play on

the Violin and French Horn, with some other

Accomplishments more useful in a Servant. Whether she

will finally be willing to part with him, or persuade

Billy to sell him to her, I know not. In the meantime

he is no Expence to us.

And that was certainly something worth noting about a servant who could

play upon the French horn.

But it is of Goody Smith, the servant in the Franklin household at

Philadelphia, whose judgment was invoked upon the failure of Deborah to

answer her husband's letter from Easton, that mention is most often made in

the portions of Franklin's letters to his wife which relate to servants. In

a letter to Deborah from Easton, he expresses his obligations to Goody

Smith for remembering him and sends his love to her. In another letter to

Deborah, when he was on his way to Williamsburg in Virginia, he says, "my

Duty to Mother, and love to Sally, Debby, Gracey, &c., not forgetting the

Goodey." Subsequently, when in England, he tells Deborah:

I have order'd two large print Common Prayer Books to

be bound on purpose for you and Goodey Smith; and that

the largeness of the Print may not make them too

bulkey, the Christnings, Matrimonies, and everything

else that you and she have not immediate and constant

Occasion for, are to be omitted. So you will both of

you be repriev'd from the Use of Spectacles in Church a

little longer.

In another letter from England, Franklin mentions that he sends Deborah a

pair of garters knit by Polly Stevenson who had also favored him with a

pair. "Goody Smith may, if she pleases," he adds, "make such for me

hereafter, and they will suit her own fat Knees. My Love to her." And love

to her he sends again when he hears that she is recovering from an illness.

Franklin likewise refers several times in his letters to Deborah to

another servant, John, who accompanied him on his return to England in

1764, but the behavior of this servant seems to have been too

unexceptionable for him to be a conspicuous figure in his master's letters.

They were evidently a kind master and mistress, Franklin and Deborah. "I am

sorry for the death of your black boy," he wrote to her on one occasion

from London, "as you seem to have had a regard for him. You must have

suffered a good deal in the fatigue of nursing him in such a distemper."

Over and over again in his letters to Deborah, Franklin approves himself a

"lover of his friends" like his friend Robert Grace. He sends his love to

them individually, and he sends his love to them collectively. Even during

a brief absence, as when he was off on his military expedition, his letters

to Deborah are sprinkled with such messages as "our Compliments to Mrs.

Masters and all enquiring Friends," "My Love to Mr. Hall" (his business

partner), "Give my hearty Love to all Friends," "Love to all our friends

and neighbours." During another brief absence in Virginia, he sends his

respects to "Mrs. Masters and all the Officers and in short to all

Philadelphia." In a later letter to Deborah, written from Utrecht, the form

of his concluding words on the previous occasion is made still more

comprehensive. "My Love," he said, "to my dear Sally, and affectionate

Regards to all Pennsylvania." In one of his letters from England, he wrote,

"Pray remember me kindly to all that love us, and to all that we love. 'Tis

endless to name names," and on still another occasion, in asking Deborah to

thank all his friends for their favors, which contributed so much to the

comfort of his voyage, he added, "I have not time to name Names: You know

whom I love and honour." He had such troops of friends that he might well

shrink from the weariness of naming them all. Indeed, he scarcely writes a

letter to Deborah that does not bear witness to the extent and warmth of

his friendships. When he left Philadelphia for England in 1757, about a

dozen of his friends accompanied him as far as Trenton, but, in the letter

to Deborah which informs us of this fact, he does not give us the names of

any of them. This letter was written from Trenton. Mrs. Grace and "Dear

Precious Mrs. Shewell," Mrs. Masters, "Mrs. Galloway & Miss," Mrs. Redman,

Mrs. Graeme, Mrs. Thomson, Mrs. Story, Mrs. Bartram, Mrs. Smith and Mrs.

Hilborne all come in at one time, as well as other ladies whom he does not

name, for his best respects, in return for friendly wishes that they had

transmitted to him through Deborah. In another letter he sends his love to

"our dear precious Polly Hunt and all our kind inquiring friends." Friends

escorted him to Trenton when he was on his way to England in 1757, friends

bestowed all sorts of gifts on him to render his voyage comfortable, Mr.

Thomas Wharton even lending him a woollen gown which he found a comfortable

companion in his winter passage; friends did him the honor to drink his

health in the unfinished kitchen of the new house built in his absence; and

friends "honored" the dining-room in this home "with their Company." When

he heard of the convivial gathering in the unfinished kitchen, he wrote to

Deborah, "I hope soon to drink with them in the Parlour," but there is a

tinge of dissatisfaction in his observations to Deborah on the gathering in

the dining-room.

It gives me Pleasure [he said] that so many of my

Friends honour'd our new Dining Room with their

Company. You tell me only of a Fault they found with

the House, that it was too little, and not a Word of

anything they lik'd in it: Nor how the Kitchen Chimneys

perform; so I suppose you spare me some Mortification,

which [he adds with a slight inflection of sarcasm] is

kind.

His dear friend, Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Wharton, Mr. Roberts, Mr. and Mrs.

Duffield, Neighbor Thomson, Dr. and Mrs. Redman, Mrs. Hopkinson, Mr. Duche,

Dr. Morgan and Mr. Hopkinson are other friends mentioned in a later letter

of his to Deborah. In the same letter, he rejoices that his "good old

Friend, Mr. Coleman, is got safe home, and continues well." Coleman, as we

shall see, was one of the two friends who had come to his aid in his early

manhood when he was sued and threatened with ruin by his creditors. The

death of the dear, amiable Miss Ross, "our Friend Bond's heavy loss," the

disorder that had befallen "our friend Kinnersley" and other kindred facts

awaken his ready sympathy; presents of books, seeds and the like, as well

as messages of love and respect, remind his friends how freshly green his

memory of them is.

The letters have much to say, too, about the presents to Deborah and Sally

which were almost incessantly crossing the outflowing currents of apples

and buckwheat meal from Philadelphia. These presents are far too numerous

to be all specified by us, but some perhaps it may not be amiss to recall.

In one letter, he writes to Deborah that he is sending her a large case

marked D. F. No. 1 and a small box marked D. F. No. 2, and that in the

large case is another small box containing some English china, viz.: melons

and leaves for a dessert of fruit and cream, or the like; a bowl remarkable

for the neatness of the figures, made at Bow near London, some coffee cups

of the same make, and a Worcester bowl, ordinary. In the same box, to show

the difference of workmanship, he said, there was something from all the

china works in England and one old true china basin mended of an odd color,

four silver salt ladles, newest but ugliest fashion, a little instrument to

core apples, another to make little turnips out of great ones and six

coarse diaper breakfast cloths. The latter, he stated, were to be spread

on the tea table, for nobody breakfasted in London on the naked table but

on the cloth set a large tea board with the cups. In the large case were

likewise some carpeting for a best room floor, and bordering to go along

with it, also two large fine Flanders bed-ticks, two pair of large

superfine fine blankets, two fine damask table-cloths and napkins, and

forty-three ells of Ghentish sheeting Holland, all of which Deborah had

ordered of him; also fifty-six yards of cotton, printed curiously from

copper plates, a new invention, to make bed and window curtains, and seven

yards of chair bottoms printed in the same way very neat. "These were my

Fancy," Franklin remarks, "but Mrs. Stevenson tells me I did wrong not to

buy both of the same Colour." In the large case, too, were seven yards of

printed cotton, blue ground, to make Deborah a gown.

I bought it by Candlelight, and lik'd it then [the

letter said], but not so well afterwards. If you do not

fancy it, send it as a Present from me to sister Jenny.

There is a better Gown for you, of flower'd Tissue, 16

yards, of Mrs. Stevenson's Fancy, cost 9 Guineas; and I

think it a great Beauty. There was no more of the Sort,

or you should have had enough for a _Negligee_ or Suit.

There is also Snuffers, Snuff Stand, and Extinguisher

of Steel, which I send for the Beauty of the Work. The

Extinguisher is for Spermaceti Candles only, and is of

a new Contrivance, to preserve the Snuff upon the

Candle.

Small box No. 2 contained cut table glass of several sorts. After stating

its contents, Franklin adds, "I am about buying a compleat Set of Table

China, 2 Cases of silver handled Knives and Forks, and 2 pair Silver

Candlesticks; but these shall keep to use here till my Return, as I am

obliged sometimes to entertain polite Company."

But there is nothing in this letter equal in interest to the paragraph

that brings to our mental eye the handsome, buxom figure of Deborah

herself.

I forgot to mention another of my Fancyings, _viz._: a

Pair of Silk Blankets, very fine. They are of a new

kind, were just taken in a French Prize, and such were

never seen in England before: they are called Blankets,

but I think will be very neat to cover a Summer Bed,

instead of a Quilt or Counterpain. I had no Choice, so

you will excuse the Soil on some of the Folds; your

Neighbour Forster can get it off. I also forgot, among

the China, to mention a large fine Jugg for Beer, to

stand in the Cooler. I fell in Love with it at first

Sight; for I thought it look'd like a fat jolly Dame,

clean and tidy, with a neat blue and white Calico Gown

on, good natur'd and lovely, and put me, in mind

of--Somebody. It has the Coffee Cups in its Belly,[21]

pack'd in best Chrystal Salt, of a peculiar nice

Flavour, for the Table, not to be powder'd.

The receipt of such a case and box as these was doubtless an event long

remembered in the Franklin home at Philadelphia. In a subsequent letter

from Franklin to Deborah, the following gifts to Sally are brought to our

attention:

By Capt. Lutwidge I sent my dear Girl a newest

fashion'd white Hat and Cloak, and sundry little

things, which I hope will get safe to hand. I now send

her a pair of Buckles, made of French Paste Stones,

which are next in Lustre to Diamonds. They cost three

Guineas, and are said to be cheap at that Price.

These were but a few of the many gifts that Deborah and Sally received from

Franklin, when he was in London. In their relations to their own

households, philosophers are frequently not unlike the ancient one, who,

when told by a messenger that his house was on fire, looked up for a minute

from his task to say impatiently that his wife attended to all his domestic

affairs. This is not true of Franklin, who was wholly free from the crass

ignorance and maladroit touch which render many husbands as much out of

place in their own houses as the officious ass in AEsop's fable was in his

master's dining-hall. Even the fences, the well and the vegetable garden at

times are mentioned in his letters to Deborah, and his mechanical skill

stood him in good stead as a householder. He knew how the carpets should be

laid down, what stuff should be purchased for curtains in the blue chamber,

and by what kind of hooks they should be fastened to the curtain rails, and

the number of curtains at each window that the London fashions required. In

one letter he gives Deborah minute instructions as to how the blue room in

his Philadelphia home was to be painted and papered. In a subsequent

letter, after saying that he was glad to hear that certain pictures were

safe arrived at Philadelphia, he adds, "You do not tell me who mounted the

great one, nor where you have hung it up."

In his relations to his home, at any rate, we can discern nothing of the

lack of order, with which he was so frank in reproaching himself. During

the time that he was detained in New York by Lord Loudon, he several times

had occasion to send a message to his wife about something that he had left

behind in his house at Philadelphia, or in his house at Woodbridge in New

Jersey, and nothing could be more exact than his recollection as to just

where each thing was. He writes for his best spectacles; he had left them

on the table, he said, meaning at Woodbridge. In the right hand little

drawer under his desk in Philadelphia was some of the Indian Lady's

gut-cambric; it was to be rolled up like a ribbon, wrapt in paper and

placed in the Indian seal skin hussiff, with the other things already in

it, and the hussiff was to be forwarded to him. It would be an acceptable

present to a gimcrack great man in London that was his friend. In certain

places on his book-shelves at Woodbridge, which he precisely locates, were

the _Gardener's Dictionary_, by P. Miller, and the _Treatise on

Cydermaking_. They were to be delivered to Mr. Parker.

Occasional shadows, of course, fall across the happy and honored life

reflected in Franklin's letters to Deborah. We cannot have the evening,

however soft and still, without its fading light; or, as Franklin himself

put it in one of these letters, "we are not to expect it will be always

Sunshine." Strenuous and absorbing as were his public tasks during each of

his missions to England; signalized as the latter were by the honors

conferred on him by ancient seats of learning, and the attentions paid him

by illustrious men; charming and refreshing as were his excursions for

health and recreation about the British Islands and on the Continent, and

his hours of social relaxation in the country houses of England, Scotland

and Ireland; supplied as he was at No. 7 Craven Street with every domestic

comfort that the assiduous management of Mrs. Stevenson--who even took care

that his shirts should be well-aired as Deborah directed--could provide,

his thoughts, now and then, as we have seen, tristfully reverted to his

home on the other side of the Atlantic. Some six months after his arrival

in England in 1757, he expressed the hope that, if he stayed another

winter, it would be more agreeable than the greatest part of the time that

he had spent in England. Some two months after his return to England in

1764, he writes to Deborah that he hopes that a few months--the few months

slid into ten years--will finish affairs in England to his wish, and bring

him to that retirement and repose, with his little family, so suitable to

his years, and which he has so long set his heart upon. Some four years

later, he wrote to Deborah:

I feel stronger and more active. Yet I would not have

you think that I fancy I shall grow young again. I know

that men of my Bulk often fail suddenly: I know that

according to the Course of Nature I cannot at most

continue much longer, and that the living even of

another Day is uncertain. I therefore now form no

Schemes, but such as are of immediate Execution;

indulging myself in no future Prospect except one, that

of returning to Philadelphia, there to spend the

Evening of Life with my Friends and Family.

There was a time when he loved England and would perhaps have contentedly

lived and died there, if his Lares and Penates could have been enticed into

taking up their abode there. With his broad, tolerant, jocund nature, he

was, it must be confessed, not a little like a hare, which soon makes a

form for itself wherever it happens to crouch. The homesickness, which

colors a few of his letters, is to no little extent the legacy of illness.

But much as he was absent from home, alchemist as he always was in

transmuting all that is disagreeable in life into what is agreeable, or at

least endurable, the family hearthside never ceased to have a bright,

cheerful glow for his well-ordered, home-loving nature.

Grave illness was more than once his lot during his mission to England.[22]

Shortly after his arrival in that country in 1757, he was seized with a

violent attack of sickness, accompanied by delirium, which left him in an

invalid condition for quite a time. From the account that he gives of the

cupping, vomiting and purging that he underwent, under the care of good

Doctor Fothergill, there would seem to have been no lack of opportunity for

the escape of the disease, which, judging by the amount of bark that he

took in substance and infusion, was probably some form of malarial fever.

This attack gives a decidedly valetudinary tone to one of his subsequent

letters to Deborah. "I am much more tender than I us'd to be," he said,

"and sleep in a short Callico Bedgown with close Sleeves, and Flannel

close-footed Trousers; for without them I get no warmth all Night. So it

seems I grow older apace." Deborah's health, too, about this time was not

overgood, for, a few months later, he writes to her: "It gives me Concern

to receive such frequent Accts of your being indisposed; but we both of

us grow in Years, and must expect our Constitutions, though tolerably good

in themselves, will by degrees give way to the Infirmities of Age." Shortly

after Franklin's arrival in England in 1764, he was seized with another

attack of illness, but he was soon able to declare that, thanks to God, he

was got perfectly well, his cough being quite gone, and his arms mending,

so that he could dress and undress himself, if he chose to endure a little

pain. A few months later, he says it rejoices him to learn that Deborah is

freer than she used to be from the headache and the pain in her side. He

himself, he said, was likewise in perfect health. Again he writes to

Deborah in the succeeding year: "I congratulate you on the soon expected

Repeal of the Stamp Act; and on the great Share of Health we both enjoy,

tho' now going in Four-score (that is, in the fourth score)." He was not

allowed, however, to indulge long the spirit of congratulation, for, a few

months later, one of his letters to Deborah brings to our knowledge the

fact that he had been very ill. After his recovery from this illness, he

does not seem to have been attacked by anything again while in England,

beyond a fit or so of the gout, and in 1768 he readily assents to the

statement of Deborah that they were both blessed with a great share of

health considering their years, then sixty-three. A few years more,

however, and Franklin's correspondence indicates plainly enough that this

statement was no longer applicable to Deborah. In the letter

last-mentioned, her husband writes to her that he wonders to hear that his

friends were backward in bringing her his letters when they arrived, and

thinks it must be a mere imagination of hers, the effect of some melancholy

humor she happened then to be in; and some four years afterwards he

recommends to her a dietary for the preservation of her health and the

improvement of her spirits. But both were then beyond repair, and, two

years later, she was in the Elysian fields where, despite what was

reported, as we shall see, by Franklin to Madame Helvetius about his

Eurydice and M. Helvetius, it is impossible to believe that she, faithful,

loving creature that she was, did anything but inconsolably await his

coming.

Of course, we are not wholly dependent upon Franklin's letters to Deborah

for details relating to Sally and Richard Bache. A very readable letter of

his is the one written by him to Sally from Reedy Island on his way to

England in 1764. Its opening sentences bring home to us anew the multitude

of his friends and the fervid enthusiasm of their friendship.

Our good friends, Mr. Galloway, Mr. Wharton, and Mr.

James, came with me in the ship from Chester to New

Castle and went ashore there [he said]. It was kind to

favour me with their good company as far as they could.

The affectionate leave taken of me by so many friends

at Chester was very endearing. God bless them and all

Pennsylvania.

Then, after observing that the natural prudence and goodness of heart, with

which God had blessed Sally, made it less necessary for him to be

particular in giving her advice, Franklin tells her that the more

attentively dutiful and tender she was towards her good mama the more she

would recommend herself to him, adding, "But why should I mention _me_,

when you have so much higher a promise in the commandments, that such

conduct will recommend you to the favour of God." After this, he warns her

that her conduct should be all the more circumspect, that no advantage

might be given to the malevolence of his political enemies, directs her to

go constantly to church and advises her in his absence to acquire those

useful accomplishments, arithmetic and book-keeping.

In his next letter to Sally, he tells her that he has met her husband at

Preston, where he had been kindly entertained for two or three days by her

husband's mother and sisters, whom he liked much. The comfort that this

assurance gave to a wife, who had never met her husband's relatives, can be

readily appreciated. He had advised Bache, he said, to settle down to

business in Philadelphia, where he would always be with her; almost any

profession a man has been educated in being preferable, in his opinion, to

an office held at pleasure, as rendering him more independent, more a

freeman, and less subject to the caprices of superiors. This means, of

course, that the Baches, too, were looking for a seat in the Post-Office

carryall, in which room was found for so many of Franklin's relations and

_proteges_.

By Industry & Frugality [Franklin further said], you

may get forward in the World, being both of you yet

young. And then what we may leave you at our Death may

be a pretty Addition, tho' of itself far from

sufficient to maintain & bring up a Family. It is of

the more Importance for you to think seriously of this,

as you may have a Number of Children to educate. 'Till

my Return you need be at no Expence for Rent, etc, as

you are all welcome to continue with your Mother, and

indeed it seems to be your Duty to attend her, as she

grows infirm, and takes much Delight in your Company

and the Child's. This Saving will be a Help in your

Progress: And for your Encouragement I can assure you

that there is scarce a Merchant of Opulence in your

Town, whom I do not remember a young Beginner with as

little to go on with, & no better Prospects than Mr.

Bache.

Ben of course is not overlooked. "I am much pleas'd with the Acc' I receive

from all Hands of your dear little Boy. I hope he will be continu'd a

Blessing to us all." It must have been a great gratification to him to

learn that Betsey, William Franklin's wife, as well as Deborah, had stood

as godmother for the child. In his next letter to Sally, acknowledging the

receipt of a pleasing letter from her, he states that he is glad that she

has undertaken the care of the housekeeping, as it would be an ease to her

mother, especially if she could manage to her approbation. "_That_," he

commented significantly, "may perhaps be at first a Difficulty."[23] It

would be of use to her, he continued, if she would get a habit of keeping

exact accounts, and it would be some satisfaction to him to see them, for

she should remember, for her encouragement in good economy, that, whatever

a child saves of its parents' money, will be its own another day. "Study,"

the letter concludes, "Poor Richard a little, and you may find some

Benefit from his Instructions." These letters were all written from London.

The rest of Franklin's letters to Sally alone were written from Passy. In

the first he says that, if she knew how happy her letters made him, and

considered how many of them miscarried, she would, he thought, write

oftener. A daughter had then been added to the members of the Bache

household, and that he had a word to pen about her goes almost without

saying. He expresses the hope that Sally would again be out of the city

during the hot months for the sake of this child's health, "for I begin to

love the dear little creature from your description of her," he said. This

was the letter in which Sally was so pointedly scored for not living more

simply and frugally.

I was charmed [he declared] with the account you gave

me of your industry, the table cloths of your own

spinning, &c.; but the latter part of the paragraph,

that you had sent for linen from France, because

weaving and flax were grown dear, alas, that dissolved

the charm; and your sending for long black pins, and

lace, and _feathers!_ disgusted me as much as if you

had put salt into my strawberries. The spinning, I see,

is laid aside, and you are to be dressed for the ball!

You seem not to know, my dear daughter, that, of all

the dear things in this world, idleness is the dearest,

except mischief.

Then Ben as usual comes in for notice. As he intended him for a

Presbyterian as well as a Republican, he had sent him to finish his

education at Geneva, Franklin stated.

He is much grown [he continues] in very good health,

draws a little, as you will see by the enclosed, learns

Latin, writing, arithmetic, and dancing, and speaks

French better than English. He made a translation of

your last letter to him, so that some of your works may

now appear in a foreign language.

A few sentences more, with regard to her second son, Will, and another

topic and there is a regurgitation of his disgust over Sally's

extravagance.

When I began [he said] to read your account of the high

prices of goods, "a pair of gloves, $7; a yard of

common gauze, $24, and that it now required a fortune

to maintain a family in a very plain way," I expected

you would conclude with telling me, that everybody as

well as yourself was grown frugal and industrious; and

I could scarce believe my eyes in reading forward, that

"there never was so much pleasure and dressing going

on," and that you yourself wanted black pins and

feathers from France to appear, I suppose, in the mode!

This leads me to imagine, that it is perhaps not so

much that the goods are grown dear, as that the money

is grown cheap, as everything else will do when

excessively plenty; and that people are still as easy

nearly in their circumstances, as when a pair of gloves

might be had for half a crown. The war indeed may in

some degree raise the prices of goods, and the high

taxes which are necessary to support the war may make

our frugality necessary; and, as I am always preaching

that doctrine, I cannot in conscience or in decency

encourage the contrary, by my example, in furnishing my

children with foolish modes and luxuries. I therefore

send all the articles you desire, that are useful and

necessary, and omit the rest; for, as you say you

should "have great pride in wearing anything I send,

and showing it as your father's taste," I must avoid

giving you an opportunity of doing that with either

lace or feathers. If you wear your cambric ruffles as I

do, and take care not to mend the holes, they will come

in time to be lace, and feathers, my dear girl, may be

had in America from every cock's tail.

Franklin's last letter to Sally was written from Passy, and contains the

inimitable strictures on the Order of the Cincinnati, to which we shall

hereafter return, but nothing of any personal or domestic interest.

Two of the letters of Franklin are written to Sally and her husband

together. "Dear Son and Daughter," is the way he begins, and one ends, "I

am ever my dear Children, your affectionate Father."

Both of these letters were written from Passy. One of them, in addition to

letting the parents know that Ben promised to be a stout, as well as a

good, man, presents with no little pathos the situation of the writer on

the eve of his departure from France for Philadelphia in 1785. After

mentioning his efforts to engage some good vessel bound directly for

Philadelphia, which would agree to take him on board at Havre with his

grandsons, servants and baggage, he sketches this lugubrious picture of

himself.