Franklin's French Friends
To the host of friends mentioned above, numerous as it was, another great
addition was to be made when Franklin became one of our envoys to France.
In the various Colonies of America, so unlike each other in many respects,
in England, in Scotland, his liberal instincts and quick sympathies ran out
into new social forms almost with the fluid ease of the melted tallow which
he had poured, in his boyhood, into his father's candle moulds; but of all
the impressions that he ever derived from any society, that which was made
upon him by French society certifies most strikingly to the wonderful
plasticity of his nature, under the pressure of new conditions. So
permeated did he--one of the truest progenitors of distinctively American
ideas and attributes, and one of the truest exponents of the robust
Anglo-Saxon character--become with the genius of the French People that a
Frenchman, Henri Martin, the historian, has declared that he was "of a mind
altogether French in its grace and elasticity."
There was a time, of course, when Franklin, apart from the inveteracy of
the old English prejudice, which believed that upon every pair of English
legs marched three Frenchmen, had no good blood for the French because of
the agony in which they had for so many years, with the aid of their savage
friends, kept the colonial frontier. "I fancy that intriguing nation would
like very well to meddle on occasion, and blow up the coals between Britain
and her colonies; but I hope we shall give them no opportunity." This was
his quiet comment even as late as 1767 in a letter to William Franklin upon
the sedulous attentions recently paid to him by Monsieur Durand, the French
plenipotentiary in London, whose masters were fully awake to the fact that
the quarrel between Great Britain and her Colonies might be a pretty one
from the point of view of French interests, and that in duels it is not the
pistols but the seconds that kill. But this was politics. Long before
Franklin crossed the Atlantic on his French mission, he had felt, during
his visits to France in 1767 and 1769, the bewitching influence of social
conditions perpetually enlivened and refreshed by the vivacity and
inventive resource which were such conspicuous features of his own
character. After his return from France in 1767, he wrote to D'Alibard:
"The Time I spent in Paris, and in the improving Conversation and agreeable
Society of so many learned and ingenious Men, seems now to me like a
pleasing Dream, from which I was sorry to be awaked by finding myself again
at London." These agreeable impressions were confirmed by his return to
France in 1769. After stating in a letter to Dupont de Nemours in the
succeeding year that he expected to return to America in the ensuing
summer, he exclaimed, "Would to God I could take with me Messrs. Dupont, du
Bourg, and some other French Friends with their good Ladies! I might then,
by mixing them with my Friends in Philadelphia, form a little happy Society
that would prevent my ever wishing again to visit Europe."
It was, therefore, to no entirely novel social conditions that Franklin was
introduced when he found himself again in France in 1776. At any rate, no
chameleon was ever quicker to absorb the color of his latest background.
As time elapsed, nothing but his inability to write and speak French with
the facility of a native-born Frenchman separated him in a social sense
from the mass of French men and women, by whom he was admired, courted and
flattered almost from the day that he set foot in France until the day that
he was conveyed in one of the Queen's litters to the coast on his return to
America. How far this assimilation was the deliberate achievement of a wise
man, who never failed to act upon the principle that the best way of
managing men is to secure their good will first, how far but the
unconscious self-adjustment of a pliable disposition it is impossible to
say. But there can be no doubt about the amazing sympathy with which
Franklin entered into the social life of the French people. Beneath the
gay, pleasure-loving exterior that he presented to French society, there
was always the thought of that land over-sea, so singularly blessed by
Providence with material comfort and equality of fortune, with the general
diffusion of education and enlightenment, and with political institutions
bound to the past only by the wisdom of experience. Always beneath that
exterior, too, was a glowing resentment of the wrongs that England had
inflicted upon America, an enthusiastic sense of the "glorious cause" in
which America was engaged, and a resolution as fixed as the eye of Nemesis
that no hand but the hand of America itself should fill out the outlines of
the imperial destiny, in which he had once been so eagerly, even
pathetically, desirous that England should share. But these were thoughts
and purposes reserved for the hours of business, or of confidential
intercourse with his American compatriots, or for such moments as the one
when he heard of the fall of Philadelphia and the surrender of Burgoyne. In
his purely social relations with the French People, he preserved only
enough of his republican ideas, dress and manners to give a certain degree
of piquancy to his _ensemble_.
He adopted French usages and customs; he composed exquisite little stories
and dialogues in the French manner, and, old as he was, he made love like a
French _galant_. "As it is always fair Weather in our Parlours, it is at
Paris always Peace," he wrote to the Chevalier de la Luzerne, and this
remark comes home to us with full force when we remember with what
unrestrained gaiety of heart, notwithstanding the shudder sent through him
at times by the American War, he enjoyed the social life of Paris. Long
before he left France, he had learnt to love the country and its people
with a sincere, fervent attachment. After saying in a letter to Josiah
Quincy, that the French had certainly advanced in politeness and civility
many degrees beyond the English, he paid them this compliment:
I find them here a most amiable Nation to live with.
The Spaniards are by common Opinion suppos'd to be
cruel, the English proud, the Scotch insolent, the
Dutch Avaricious, &c., but I think the French have no
national Vice ascrib'd to them. They have some
Frivolities, but they are harmless. To dress their
Heads so that a Hat cannot be put on them, and then
wear their Hats under their Arms, and to fill their
Noses with Tobacco, may be called Follies, perhaps, but
they are not Vices. They are only the effects of the
tyranny of Custom. In short, there is nothing wanting
in the Character of a Frenchman, that belongs to that
of an agreeable and worthy Man. There are only some
Trifles surplus, or which might be spared.
These, however, were but frigid words in comparison with those subsequently
employed by him in relation to a country, where, to use his own language,
everybody strove to make him happy. "The French are an amiable People to
live with," he told his old friend, Captain Nathaniel Falconer, "They love
me, & I love them." In a later letter to William Franklin, he said, "I am
here among a People that love and respect me, a most amiable Nation to
live with; and perhaps I may conclude to die among them; for my Friends in
America are dying off, one after another, and I have been so long abroad,
that I should now be almost a Stranger in my own Country."
Nor did the love for France that he took back with him to the United States
grow at all fainter with absence and the flow of time. To the Duc de la
Rochefoucauld he wrote from Philadelphia, "I love France, I have 1000
Reasons for doing so: And whatever promotes or impedes her Happiness
affects me as if she were my Mother." To Madame Lavoisier he used terms
that communicate to us an even more vivid conception of the ambrosial years
that he had passed in France.
These [he said, referring to his good fortune in his
old age in its different aspects] are the blessings of
God, and depend on his continued goodness; yet all do
not make me forget Paris, and the nine years' happiness
I enjoyed there, in the sweet society of a people whose
conversation is instructive, whose manners are highly
pleasing, and who, above all the nations of the world,
have, in the greatest perfection, the art of making
themselves beloved by strangers. And now, even in my
sleep, I find, that the scenes of all my pleasant
dreams are laid in that city, or in its
neighbourhood.[38]
Mingled with these pleasant dreams, it is safe to say were some of the
lively and charming women to whose embraces he submitted, if his sister
Jane was not misinformed, in a spirit quite remote from that of the rigors
of penance.
You mention the Kindness of the French Ladies to me [he
wrote to Elizabeth Partridge, whose husband was the
superintendent of the almshouse in Boston], I must
explain that matter. This is the civilest nation upon
Earth. Your first Acquaintances endeavour to find out
what you like, and they tell others. If 'tis understood
that you like Mutton, dine where you will you find
Mutton. Somebody, it seems, gave it out that I lov'd
Ladies; and then everybody presented me their Ladies
(or the Ladies presented themselves) to be _embrac'd_,
that is to have their Necks kiss'd. For as to kissing
of Lips or Cheeks it is not the Mode here, the first,
is reckon'd rude, & the other may rub off the Paint.
The French Ladies have however 1000 other ways of
rendering themselves agreeable; by their various
Attentions and Civilities, & their sensible
Conversation. 'Tis a delightful People to live with.
I hope, however [he wrote to another correspondent after denying a story
about himself], to preserve, while I stay, the regard you mention of the
French ladies; for their society and conversation, when I have time to
enjoy them, are extremely agreeable.
And that the French ladies found his society and conversation extremely
agreeable no one can well doubt who has had occasion to become familiar
with the scented missives, full of artful coquetry, that were addressed by
many fair hands to "tres cher papa," or "Dear American papa" or "amiable
papa," when he was in the land where somebody had been so considerate as to
give it out that he liked ladies. At times, these notes run along in
mingled French and English as if the writers were determined to bring to
bear upon him the blandishments not only of the former language but of his
own familiar tongue besides. "Je vous envoye a sweet kiss, dear Papa,
envoyez moi en revanche, un Mot de Reponse," was one languishing request.
Even Franklin's bad French mattered but little when a woman, Madame
Brillon, whom the daughter of Abigail Adams pronounced "one of the
handsomest women in France," could write to him, "It is always very good
French to say, 'Je vous aime.' My heart always goes out to meet this word
when you say it to me." From such words as these to his saying that the
best master of languages is a mistress the transition was not very
difficult.[39]
It was at Passy, then a suburb of Paris, that Franklin resided during the
eight and a half years that he was one of our representatives in France.
His surroundings were thus described by him in reply to a question from
Mrs. Stevenson:
You wish to know how I live. It is in a fine House,
situated in a neat Village, on high Ground, half a Mile
from Paris, with a large Garden to walk in. I have
abundance of Acquaintance, dine abroad Six days in
seven. Sundays I reserve to dine at home, with such
Americans as pass this Way; and I then have my grandson
Ben, with some other American Children from his school.
The house mentioned by Franklin was known as the Basse Cour de Monsieur Le
Ray de Chaumont, and had originally, with the inscription over its door,
"Se sta bene, non si muove" not been unknown to fame as the Hotel de
Valentinois. Indeed, John Locke, who visited Paris in 1679, declared that
it was among the twenty-four _belles maisons_ in Paris that best rewarded
the curiosity of the stranger at that time. The circumstances, under which
it passed into the possession of Franklin, were another proof of the
flaming zeal with which many of the foremost inhabitants of France espoused
the cause of the Colonies. Chaumont was Grand Maitre des Eaux et Forets de
France and Intendant Honoraire des Invalides, a friend of the Duc de
Choiseul, and a man of large wealth, with a chateau on the Loire as well as
the mansion at Passy, of which the building occupied by Franklin was a
part. In his generous enthusiasm for American liberty, he declined a post
in the French Ministry, offered to him by Choiseul, because he thought that
by declining it he might be a more useful intermediary between America and
the French Government. When John Adams came to Passy, and found a home
under the same roof with Franklin, he felt obliged to write to Chaumont
asking him to consider what rent they should pay to him for the use of his
house and furniture. Every part of Chaumont's conduct towards him and
Americans in general, and in all their affairs, he said, had been polite
and obliging, as far as he had an opportunity of observing, and he had no
doubt it would continue, but it was not reasonable that they should occupy
such an elegant mansion without any compensation to the owner, and it was
not right that they should live at too great or at too uncertain an expense
to their constituents. The reply of Chaumont was worthy of a paladin of
Ancient France. "When I consecrated my home to Dr. Franklin and his
associates who might live with him," he said, "I made it fully understood
that I should expect no compensation, because I perceived that you had need
of all your means to send to the succor of your country, or to relieve the
distresses of your countrymen escaping from the chains of their enemies."
This is a world, however, in which it is too much to expect an absolutely
free gift of house rent, and the answer of Chaumont to John Adams does not
altogether agree with the version of the matter given by Franklin in a
letter to Robert R. Livingston, in which he said that Chaumont had
originally proposed to leave the article of rent unsettled until the end of
the war, and then to accept for it a piece of American land from the
Congress such as they might judge equivalent. Considering the serious
uncertainty as to whether there would then be any Congress, this was quite
generous enough. It is painful to relate, however, that Chaumont engaged so
recklessly in the hazardous business of shipping supplies to America for
the patriot army as to become involved in pecuniary embarrassments, which
produced some degree of temporary constraint in his intercourse with
Franklin. "I find that in these Affairs with him, a Bargain tho' ever so
clearly express'd signifies nothing," wrote Franklin in a moment of disgust
with his volatility to Jonathan Williams. A few months before, Franklin had
made this entry in a journal kept by him during a brief portion of his
residence at Passy. "Visit at M. de Chaumont's in the evening; found him
cold and dry." But before Franklin left France, the old cordiality of
intercourse appears to have been fully re-established, for we find the two
dining with each other again, and besides, when Franklin was on his way to
the seacoast, on his return to America, Chaumont and his daughter
accompanied him part of the way. The entire restoration of good feeling
between the two men is also shown in the letters and conduct of Franklin
after his return to America. Chaumont was one of the group of French
friends favored by him with gifts of the Franklin Myrtle Wax Soap,
"thought," he said, "to be the best in the World, for Shaving & for washing
Chinces, and other things of delicate Colours." In one of his letters from
Philadelphia, Franklin tells Chaumont that Donatien Le Ray Chaumont, the
Younger, who had come over to America to press certain claims of the elder
Chaumont against the United States, was out at that time with his "son
Bache" and some others on a hunt. It is in this letter, by the way, that he
said of Finck, his _maitre d' hotel_ at Passy, who was pretending that he
was not wholly paid, "He was continually saying of himself, Je suis honnete
homme, Je suis honnete homme. But I always suspected he was mistaken; and
so it proves." In another letter, he wrote to Chaumont, "I have frequently
the Pleasure of seeing your valuable Son, whom I love as my own," and in
this letter he sent his love to all Chaumont's children in France, one of
whom he was in the habit of addressing as "ma femme," another as "ma chere
amie," and still another as "mon enfant." "Present my affectionate Respects
to Madame de Chaumont, and Love to Mad'e Foucault, to ma Femme, ma
chere Amie, et mon Enfant," was one of his messages to Chaumont. This
Madame Foucault was the favorite mentioned by William Temple Franklin, when
he wrote to his grandfather some nine months after the latter found the
manner of Chaumont "cold and dry," "All the family (the Chaumonts) send
their love to you, and the beautiful M'e Foucault accompanys hers with an
English kiss." A challenge of that kind was always promptly caught up by
Franklin. "Thanks to Mad'e Foucault," he replied, "for her kindness in
sending me the Kiss. It was grown cold by the way. I hope for a warm one
when we meet."
An amusing observation of Madame Chaumont, which has its value, as an
illustration of eighteenth-century manners in France, is quoted in a letter
from Franklin to John Paul Jones:
L'Abbe Rochon had just been telling me & Madame
Chaumont [wrote Franklin] that the old Gardiner & his
Wife had complained to the Curate, of your having
attack'd her in the Garden about 7 o'clock the evening
before your Departure, and attempted to ravish her
relating all the Circumstances, some of which are not
fit for me to write. The serious Part of it was yt
three of her Sons were determin'd to kill you, if you
had not gone off; the Rest occasioned some Laughing;
for the old Woman being one of the grossest, coarsest,
dirtiest & ugliest that we may find in a thousand,
Madame Chaumont said it gave a high Idea of the
Strength of Appetite & Courage of the Americans. A Day
or two after, I learnt yt it was the femme de
Chambre of Mademoiselle Chaumont who had disguis'd
herself in a Suit, I think, of your Cloaths, to divert
herself under that Masquerade, as is customary the last
evening of Carnival: and that meeting the old Woman in
the Garden, she took it into her Head to try her
Chastity, which it seems was found Proof.
The wit of Madame de Chaumont, however, shows to better advantage in
connection with another incident. One of Franklin's friends was
Mademoiselle Passy, a beautiful girl, whom he was in the habit of calling,
so John Adams tells us, "his favorite, and his flame, and his love," which
flattered the family, and did not displease the young lady. When her
engagement to the Marquis de Tonnerre was announced, Madame de Chaumont
exclaimed to Franklin, "Helas! tous les conducteurs de Monsieur Franklin
n'ont pas empeche le tonnerre de tomber sur Mademoiselle de Passy."
Franklin himself was entirely too good a conductor of wit not to pass a
thing like this on.
It gives me great Pleasure Madam my respected
Neighbour, [he said in a letter to Madame de
Boulainvilliers, the mother of the Semele upon whom the
Marquis was about to descend] to learn that our lovely
Child is soon to be married with your Approbation &
that we are not however to be immediately depriv'd of
her Company. I assure you I shall make no Use of my
Paratonnerre [lightning-rod] to prevent this Match.
Franklin's republican simplicity began and ended with his unpowdered hair,
worn straight, and covered with a cap of marten fur, and his russet dress.
At Passy, he lived in a manner that Vergennes, accustomed to the splendor
and profusion of European Courts, might well call modest, but which was
quite as lavish as was consistent with the reputation of a plain democrat
or of a veritable philosopher. Under the terms of his contract with his
_maitre d'hotel_, the latter was to provide _dejeuner_ and dinner daily for
five persons. The _dejeuner_ was to consist of bread and butter, honey, and
coffee or chocolate with sugar, and the dinner of a joint of beef, or veal
or mutton, followed by fowl or game with "deux plats d'entremets, deux
plats de legumes, et un plat de Pattisserie, avec hors d'oeuvre, de
Beurres, cornichons, radis, etc." For dessert, there were to be "deux de
Fruit en hiver et 4 en Ete." There were also to be at dinner: "Deux
compottes, un assiette de fromage, un de Biscuits, et un de bonbons," and
"Des Glaces, 2 fois par Semaine en Ete et un fois en Hyver." The cost of
this service per month was 720 livres. There was also an allowance of 240
livres per month for nine domestic servants, and of 400 livres per month
for extra dinners for guests; making the total monthly cost of Franklin's
table 1360 livres. And there was no lack of good wine, red or white,
_ordinaire_ or _extraordinaire_. In 1778, there were 1180 bottles of wine
and rum in the cellar at Passy, and, some four and one half years later,
there were 1203. Franklin also maintained a carriage and coachman at a cost
of 5018 livres per year. By a resolution of Congress, the salaries of the
different Commissioners of the United States in Europe were fixed at 11,428
livres tournois per annum, in addition to their reasonable expenses, and
the total expenses of Franklin in France are computed by Smyth to have been
about $15,000 per annum, a moderate sum, indeed, in comparison with the
amount necessary to sustain the dignity of our Minister to France at the
present time. Nevertheless, the _menage_ at Passy was luxurious enough for
him to be warned that it had been described at home by some of his guests
in such terms as to provoke popular censure on the part of his countrymen.
They must be contented for the future [Franklin said in
a letter to John Adams] as I am, with plain beef and
pudding. The readers of Connecticut newspapers ought
not to be troubled for any more accounts of our
extravagance. For my own part, if I could sit down to
dinner on a piece of excellent salt pork and pumpkin, I
would not give a farthing for all the luxuries of
Paris.
After this time, Franklin did not keep such an open house as before,
considerably to the relief of his gout. Previously, if we may believe John
Adams, he had made a practice of inviting everybody to dine with him on
Sunday at Passy. Sometimes, his company was made up exclusively, or all but
exclusively, of Americans, and sometimes partly of Americans, and partly of
French, and, now and then, there was an Englishman or so. Miss Adams
mentions a "sumptuous dinner," at which the members of the Adams family,
the Marquis de la Fayette and his wife, Lord Mount Morris, an Irish
Volunteer, Dr. Jeffries, and Paul Jones were guests. Another dinner is
mentioned by her at which all the guests were Americans, except M. Brillon,
who had dropped in, he said, "a demander un dine a Pere Franklin." A
whimsical story is told by Jefferson of still another dinner at which one
half of the guests were Americans and one half French.
Among the last [he says] was the Abbe (Raynal). During
the dinner he got on his favorite theory of the
degeneracy of animals, and even of men, in America, and
urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor at length
noticing the accidental stature and position of his
guests, at table, "Come," says he, "M. L'Abbe, let us
try this question by the fact before us. We are here
one half Americans, and one half French, and it happens
that the Americans have placed themselves on one side
of the table, and our French friends are on the other.
Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side
nature has degenerated." It happened that his American
guests were Carmichael, Harmer, Humphreys, and others
of the finest stature and form; while those of the
other side were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbe
himself, particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried
the appeal, however, by a complimentary admission of
exceptions, among which the Doctor himself was a
conspicuous one.
Not the least interesting of the guests that Franklin drew around his table
at Passy were lads, who had a claim upon his notice, either because they
were the sons, or grandsons, of friends of his, or because they were
friends of his grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache. In a letter to Doctor
Cooper, Franklin tells him that his grandson, Samuel Cooper Johonnot
appeared a very promising lad, in whom he thought that the doctor would
have much satisfaction, and was well on the preceding Sunday, when he had
had the pleasure of his company to dinner with Mr. Adams' sons, and some
other young Americans. There is still in existence a letter from John
Quincy Adams, then a boy of eleven, to Franklin, which indicates that the
latter had quite won his heart, though, do what he might, he could never
win the heart of the elder Adams.
It was a brilliant society, to which Franklin was introduced, after the
first reserve of the French Court, before its recognition of American
independence, was laid aside. He had the magpie habit of hoarding every
scrap of paper or cardboard, that bore the imprint of his existence, and
Smyth, the latest editor of Franklin's works, has, with his usual
diligence, compiled the names that appear most frequently on the visiting
cards, found among Franklin's papers. They are such significant names as
those of La Duchesse d'Enville, her son Le Duc de la Rochefoucauld, M.
Turgot, Duc de Chaulnes, Comte de Crillon, Vicomte de Sarsfield, M.
Brisson, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Comte de Milly, Prince des
Deuxponts, Comte d'Estaing, Marquis de Mirabeau and M. Beaugeard, Treasurer
of the State of Brittany.
The Diary of John Adams reveals Franklin and himself dining on one occasion
with La Duchesse d'Enville, and "twenty of the great people of France," on
another with M. Chalut, one of the farmers-general, and the old Marshal
Richelieu, and "a vast number of other great company," on another with the
Prince de Tingry, Duc de Beaumont, of the illustrious House of Montmorency,
and on another with La Duchesse d'Enville, along with her daughter and
granddaughter, and dukes, abbots and the like so numerous that the list
ends with a splutter of et ceteras. "Dukes, and bishops and counts, etc."
are the overburdened words with which Adams closes his list of the guests
at a dinner given by Vergennes, the minister of Louis XVI.
But, after all, it was the circle of intimate friends, to which Franklin
promised to introduce John Jay on the arrival of Jay in France, that
constitutes the chief interest of the former's social life in France. Three
of these friends were Madame Helvetius, Madame Brillon and the Comtesse
d'Houdetot. With Madame Helvetius, he dined every Saturday at Auteuil, with
Madame Brillon twice a week at the home of her husband, not far from his,
and with the Comtesse d'Houdetot frequently at Sanois, in the Valley of
Montmorency. Madame Helvetius was known to her friends as "Our Lady of
Auteuil." She was the widow of Helvetius, the philosopher, who had left her
a handsome fortune, amassed by him when one of the farmers-general. In
testimony of her affection for him, she kept under glass, on a table in her
bedroom, a monument erected to his memory, with his picture hung above it.
Her _salon_ was one of the best-known in France, and it was maintained on
such a sumptuous scale that, in one of his letters, after his return to
America, Franklin told her that often in his dreams he placed himself by
her side on one of her thousand sofas. It was at Auteuil that he passed
some of his happiest hours in France, plying its mistress with flattery and
badinage, and enjoying the music of her two daughters, known to the
household as "the Stars," and the conversation of her friends, the younger
Cabanis, and the Abbes Morellet and de la Roche. One of the amusements of
the inner circle at Auteuil was to read aloud to each other little trifles,
full of point and grace which they had composed. Thus, though after
Franklin had returned to America, was ushered into the world the Abbe
Morellet's _Very Humble Petition to Madame Helvetius from her
Cats_--animals which appear to have had a position in her home as assured
as that of "the Stars" or the Abbes themselves; and several of the wittiest
of the productions, which Franklin called his Bagatelles, originated in the
same way. If homage, seasoned with delightful humor and wit, could have
kept the mistress of Auteuil, at the age of sixty, from incurring the
malice of the female contemporary, who, we are told by Miss Adams, compared
her with the ruins of Palmyra, that of Franklin would assuredly have done
it. When she complained that he had not been to see her for a long time, he
evaded the reproach of absence by replying, "I am waiting, Madame, until
the nights are longer." Whatever others might think, she was to him, "his
fair friend at Auteuil," who still possessed "health and personal charms."
What cleverer application could there be than this of the maxim of Hesiod
that the half is sometimes more than the whole:
Very dear Friend, we shall have some good music
to-morrow morning at breakfast. Can you give me the
pleasure of sharing in it. The time will be half past
ten. This is a problem that a mathematician will
experience some trouble in explaining; In sharing other
things, each of us has only one portion; but in sharing
pleasures with you, my portion is doubled. The part is
more than the whole.
On another occasion, when Madame Helvetius reminded Franklin that she
expected to meet him at Turgot's, he replied, "Mr. Franklin never forgets
any party at which Madame Helvetius is expected. He even believes that, if
he were engaged to go to Paradise this morning, he would pray for
permission to remain on earth until half-past one, to receive the embrace
promised him at the Turgots."
Poor Deborah seems altogether lost, and forgotten when we read these lines
that he wrote to the Abbe de la Roche:
I have often remarked, when reading the works of M.
Helvetius, that, although we were born and reared in
two countries so remote from each other, we have
frequently had the same thoughts; and it is a
reflection very flattering to me that we have loved the
same studies, and, as far as we have both known them,
the same friends, and the same woman.
But the image of Deborah was not so completely effaced from Franklin's
memory that he could not conjure up her shade for a moment to excite a
retaliatory impulse in the breast which he had found insensible to his
proposals of marriage, serious, or affected. If Madame Helvetius, who was
illiterate like Deborah, did not appreciate the light, aerial humor of the
following dream from the pen of the author of _The Art of Procuring
Pleasant Dreams_, we may be sure that her witty Abbes did:
Mortified by your cruel resolution, declared by you so
positively yesterday evening, to remain single the rest
of your life, out of respect for your dear husband, I
retired to my home, threw myself upon my bed, and
dreamt that I was dead and in the Elysian Fields.
I was asked whether I wished to see any persons in
particular. "Conduct me to the philosophers," I
replied. "There are two who live here close by in this
garden; they are very good neighbors and very friendly
with each other," I was told. "Who are they?" "Socrates
and Helvetius." "I esteem them both immensely, but let
me see Helvetius first, because I understand a little
French, but not a word of Greek." He received me with
much courtesy, having known me, he said, by reputation
for some time past. He asked me a thousand questions
about the war, the present state of religion, of
liberty, and politics in France. "You do not ask me
then," I said, "anything about your dear _amie_, Madame
Helvetius; yet she loves you still exceedingly, and I
was at her home only an hour ago." "Ah," said he, "you
bring back to me my past happiness, but it must be
forgotten to be happy here. During several of my first
years here, I thought only of her, but at length I am
consoled. I have taken another wife, one as much like
her as I could find. She is not, it is true, quite so
handsome, but she has as much good sense, and much
_esprit_, and she loves me infinitely. Her continuous
aim is to please me, and she is at this moment gone to
look up the best nectar and ambrosia to regale me with
this evening; stay here awhile, and you will see her."
"I perceive," said I, "that your former _amie_ is more
faithful than you are; for she has had several good
offers, but has refused them all. I confess that I
myself have loved her to distraction, but she was
obdurate, and has rejected me peremptorily for love of
you." "I pity your misfortune," said he, "for in truth
she is a good and handsome woman, and very lovable."
"But are not the Abbe de la R---- and the Abbe M----
still some times at her house?" "Yes, to be sure, for
she has not lost a single one of your friends." "If you
had induced the Abbe M----(with some good coffee and
cream) to say a word for you, you would, perhaps, have
succeeded; for he is as subtle a reasoner as Duns
Scotus or St. Thomas; he marshals his arguments in such
good order that they become almost irresistible. And if
the Abbe de la R---- had been induced (by some fine
edition of an old classic) to say a word against you,
that would have been better; for I have always observed
that when he advised her to do anything she had a very
strong inclination to do the reverse." As he was saying
this, the new Madame Helvetius entered with the nectar,
and I recognized her instantly as my former American
_amie_, Mrs. Franklin. I laid claim to her but she said
to me coldly: "I was a good wife to you for forty-nine
years and four months, almost a half century; be
content with that. I have formed a new connection here
which will last to eternity." Indignant at this refusal
of my Eurydice, I at once resolved to quit those
ungrateful shades, and to return to this good world,
and to gaze again upon the sun and you. Here I am; let
us avenge ourselves.
It is an animated picture, too, that Franklin strikes off of Our Lady of
Auteuil in a letter to Cabanis, when the latter had been absent for a time
from Auteuil:
We often talk of you at Auteuil, where everybody loves
you. I now and then offend our good lady who can not
long retain her displeasure, but, sitting in state on
her sopha, extends graciously her long, handsome arm,
and says "la; baisez ma main: Je vous pardonne," with
all the dignity of a sultaness. She is as busy as ever,
endeavoring to make every creature about her happy,
from the Abbes down thro' all ranks of the family to
the birds and Poupon.
Poupon was one of the fair lady's eighteen cats. This letter ends with the
request that Cabanis present to his father the writer's thanks to him for
having gotten so valuable a son.
A lively note to Cabanis is in the same vein:
M. Franklin risen, washed, shaved, combed, beautified
to the highest degree, of which he is capable, entirely
dressed, and on the point of going out, with his head
full of the four Mesdames Helvetius, and of the sweet
kisses that he proposes to snatch from them, is much
mortified to find the possibility of this happiness
being put off until next Sunday. He will exercise as
much patience as he can, hoping to see one of these
ladies at the home of M. de Chaumont Wednesday. He will
be there in good time to see her enter with that grace
and dignity which charmed him so much seven weeks ago
in the same place. He even plans to seize her there,
and to keep her at his home for the rest of her life.
His remaining three Mesdames Helvetius at Auteuil can
suffice for the canaries and the Abbes.
Another note to Cabanis illustrates how readily pleasantry of this kind ran
in the eighteenth century into gross license:
M. Franklin is sorry to have caused the least hurt to
those beautiful tresses that he always regards with
pleasure. If that Lady likes to pass her days with him,
he would like as much to pass his nights with her; and
since he has already given many of his days to her,
although he had such a small remnant of them to give,
she would seem ungrateful to have never given him a
single one of her nights, which run continually to pure
waste, without promoting the good fortune of any one
except Poupon.
When the reader is told that this letter ended with the words, "to be shown
to our Lady of Auteuil," his mind is not unprepared for the graphic
description by Abigail Adams of a dinner at which Madame Helvetius was the
central figure:
She entered the room with a careless, jaunty air; upon
seeing ladies who were strangers to her, she bawled
out, "Ah, mon Dieu, where is Franklin? Why did you not
tell me there were ladies here?" You must suppose her
speaking all this in French. "How I look!" said she,
taking hold of a chemise made of tiffany, which she had
on over a blue lutestring, and which looked as much
upon the decay as her beauty, for she was once a
handsome woman; her hair was frizzled; over it she had
a small straw hat, with a dirty gauze half-handkerchief
round it, and a bit of dirtier gauze than ever my maids
wore was bowed on behind. She had a black gauze scarf
thrown over her shoulders. She ran out of the room;
when she returned, the Doctor entered at one door, she
at the other; upon which she ran forward to him, caught
him by the hand, "Helas! Franklin;" then gave him a
double kiss, one upon each cheek, and another upon his
forehead. When we went into the room to dine, she was
placed between the Doctor and Mr. Adams. She carried on
the chief of the conversation at dinner, frequently
locking her hands into the Doctor's, and sometimes
spreading her arms upon the backs of both the
gentlemen's chairs, then throwing her arm carelessly
upon the Doctor's neck.
I should have been greatly astonished at this conduct,
if the good Doctor had not told me that in this lady I
should see a genuine Frenchwoman, wholly free from
affectation or stiffness of behaviour, and one of the
best women in the world. For this I must take the
Doctor's word; but I should have set her down for a
very bad one, although sixty years of age, and a widow.
I own I was highly disgusted, and never wish for an
acquaintance with any ladies of this cast. After
dinner, she threw herself upon a settee, where she
showed more than her feet. She had a little lapdog, who
was, next to the Doctor, her favorite. This she kissed,
and when he wet the floor she wiped it up with her
chemise. This is one of the Doctor's most intimate
friends, with whom he dines once every week, and she
with him. She is rich, and is my near neighbour; but I
have not yet visited her. Thus you see, my dear, that
manners differ exceedingly in different countries. I
hope however, to find among the French ladies manners
more consistent with my ideas of decency, or I shall be
a mere recluse.
This, of course, in part, was but the New England snowdrop expressing its
disapproval of the full-blown red rose of France, but it is impossible for
all the pigments in the picture, painted by the skilful hand of Abigail
Adams, to have been supplied by the moral austerity of Puritanism. Miss
Adams, we might add, followed up her mother's impression with a prim ditto
in her journal: "Dined at Mr. Franklin's by invitation; a number of
gentlemen and Madame Helvetius, a French lady sixty years of age. Odious
indeed do our sex appear when divested of those ornaments, with which
modesty and delicacy adorn us." But we suspect that the Doctor was right in
saying that Madame Helvetius, free and tawdry as she seemed to Abigail
Adams and her daughter, was one of the best women in the world; that is to
say her world. We are told that, when she was convalescing from an illness,
four hundred persons assembled at Auteuil to express the pleasure they felt
at the prospect of her recovery. Beneath the noisy, lax manners, which Mrs.
Adams delineates so mercilessly, there must have been another and a very
different Madame Helvetius to have won such a tribute as the following from
a man who had known what it was to be tenderly beloved by more than one
pure, thoroughly refined and accomplished woman:
And now I mention your friends, let me tell you, that I
have in my way been trying to form some hypothesis to
account for your having so many, and of such various
kinds. I see that statesmen, philosophers, historians,
poets, and men of learning of all sorts are drawn
around you, and seem as willing to attach themselves to
you as straws about a fine piece of amber. It is not
that you make pretensions to any of their sciences; and
if you did, similarity of studies does not always make
people love one another. It is not that you take pains
to engage them; artless simplicity is a striking part
of your character. I would not attempt to explain it by
the story of the ancient, who, being asked why
philosophers sought the acquaintance of kings, and
kings not that of philosophers, replied that
philosophers knew what they wanted, which was not
always the case with kings. Yet thus far the comparison
may go, that we find in your sweet society that
charming benevolence, that amiable attention to oblige,
that disposition to please and be pleased, which we do
not always find in the society of one another. It
springs from you; it has its influence on us all, and
in your company we are not only pleased with you, but
better pleased with one another and ourselves.
There can be no doubt that the friendship between the two was a real,
genuine sentiment. When Franklin was doubting whether he was not too old
and decrepit to cross the Atlantic, she was one of the three friends who
urged him to spend his last days in France, and live with them. It was
hardly fair, therefore, when she exclaimed after the departure of Franklin
from France, in the presence of Madame Brillon, "Ah, that great man, that
dear man, we shall see him no more," for Madame Brillon to retort, "It is
entirely your fault, Madame."
From Havre he sent back tender farewells to his "tres chere amie." They
were awaiting, he said, their baggage and fellow-voyager, Mr. Houdon, the
sculptor. "When they come, we shall quit France, the country of the world
that I love the best; and I shall leave there my dear Helvetia. She can be
happy there. I am not sure of being happy in America; but it is necessary
for me to go there. Things seem to me to be badly arranged here below, when
I see beings so well constituted to be happy together compelled to
separate." Then after a message of friendship to "the Abbes the good
Abbes," the _vale_ dies out in these fond words: "I do not tell you that I
love you. I might be told that there was nothing strange or meritorious in
that, because the whole world loves you. I only hope that you will always
love me a little."
Nor did the separation worked by the Atlantic produce any change in these
feelings. In the letters written by Franklin to Madame Helvetius, and the
members of her circle, after his return to Philadelphia, there is the same
spirit of affection for her and for them, as well as a wistful retrospect
of his chats with her on her thousand sofas, his walks with her in her
garden, and the repasts at her table, always seasoned by sound sense,
sprightliness and friendship. One of his commissions seems to have been to
obtain a cardinal red bird for the "good dame," as he calls her in a letter
to the Abbe Morellet from Philadelphia. "The good Dame, whom we all love,
and whose Memory I shall love and honour as long as I have any Existence,"
were his words. But the commission was difficult of execution. The Virginia
cardinal, he wrote to the Abbe, was a tender bird that stood the sea but
poorly. Several sent out to France for their dame by Mr. Alexander, in his
tobacco ships, had never arrived, he understood, and, "unless a Friend was
going in the Ship who would take more than common Care of them," he
supposed, "one might send an hundred without landing one alive."
They would be very happy, I know [he said], if they
were once under her Protection; but they cannot come to
her, and she will not come to them. She may remember
the Offer I made her of 1,000 Acres of Woodland, out of
which she might cut a great Garden and have 1,000
Aviaries if she pleased. I have a large Tract on the
Ohio where Cardinals are plenty. If I had been a
Cardinal myself perhaps I might have prevail'd with
her.
In his efforts to transport the Cardinal, Franklin even enlisted the
services of Mr. Paradise, who, if contemporary gossip is reliable, might
well have pleaded the preoccupation imposed upon him of protecting himself
from the beak of his own termagant wife. Madame Helvetius, however, was not
so eager for a cardinal as not to be willing to wait until one could be
brought over by a proper escort. "I am in no hurry at all," she wrote to
Franklin; "I will wait; for I am not willing to be the death of these
pretty creatures. I will wait." In this same letter, there is an amusing
mixture of tenderness and banter. Declining health and advancing years, she
said, would but enable them the sooner to meet again as well as to meet
again those whom they had loved, she a husband and he a wife; "but I
believe," she wipes the moisture from her eyes long enough to say, "that
you who have been a rogue (_coquin_) will be restored to more than one."
From what we have said, it is plain enough that the friendship felt by
Madame Helvetius for the Abbes Morellet and de la Roche was shared by
Franklin. When he touched at Southampton, after leaving Havre, on his
return to America, he wafted another fond farewell to Madame Helvetius; "I
will always love you," he said, "think of me sometimes, and write sometimes
to your B. F." This letter, too, contained the usual waggish reference to
the Abbes. "Adieu, my very, very, very dear amie. Wish us a good voyage,
and tell the good Abbes to pray for us, since that is their profession."
The _Very Humble Petition to Madame Helvetius from her Cats_ was long
ascribed to Franklin, but it was really written by the Abbe Morellet. After
reading it, Franklin wrote to the Abbe that the rapidity, with which the
good lady's eighteen cats were increasing, would, in time, make their cause
insupportable, and that their friends should, therefore, advise them to
submit voluntarily either to transportation or castration. How deeply the
Abbe Morellet was attached to Franklin is feelingly revealed in the letters
which he wrote to him after the latter had arrived safely in America; to
say nothing of the Abbe's Memoirs.
May your days [he wrote in one of these letters] be
prolonged and be free from pain; may your friends long
taste the sweetness and the charm of your society, and
may those whom the seas have separated from you be
still happy in the thought that the end of your career
will be, as our good La Fontaine says, "the evening of
a fine day."
Then, after some political reflections, suggested by the liberal
institutions of America, the Abbe indulges in a series of gay comments on
the habit that their Lady of Auteuil had, in her excessive love of coffee,
of robbing him of his share of the cream, on the vicious bulldog brought
over by Temple to France from England and on the host of cats, that had
multiplied in the woodhouse and woodyard at Auteuil, under the patronage of
their mistress, and did nothing but keep their paws in their furred gowns,
and warm themselves in the sun. Friends of liberty, these cats, the Abbe
said, were entirely out of place under the governments of Europe. Nothing
could be more suitable than to load a small vessel with them and ship them
to America. Another letter from the Abbe concluded with these heartfelt
words:
I shall never forget the happiness I have enjoyed in
knowing you, and seeing you intimately. I write to you
from Auteuil, seated in your arm-chair, on which I have
engraved, _Benjamin Franklin hic sedebat_, and having
by my side the little bureau, which you bequeathed to
me at parting, with a drawer full of nails to gratify
the love of nailing and hammering, which I possess in
common with you. But believe me, I have no need of all
these helps to cherish your endeared _remembrance_, and
to love you,
"Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos reget artus."
During their jolly intercourse in France, the Abbe Morellet and Franklin
touched glasses in two highly convivial productions. On one of the
anniversaries of the birth of Franklin, or of American liberty, the Abbe
could not remember which, the Abbe composed a drinking song in honor of
Franklin, and among the letters written by Franklin when he was in France
was one to the Abbe in which wine is lauded in terms of humorous
exaggeration. One of the verses of the Abbe's production refers to the
American War, and has been translated in these words by Parton:
"Never did mankind engage
In a war with views more sage;
They seek freedom with design,
To drink plenty of French wine;
Such has been
The intent of Benjamin."
The other verses are no better and no worse, and the whole poem is even
more inferior in wit to Franklin's letter to the Abbe than the _Very Humble
Petition to Madame Helvetius from her Cats_, clever though it be, is to
Franklin's _Journey to the Elysian Fields_. If we had nothing but these
bibulous productions to judge by, we might infer that love of wine, quite
as much as love of Madame Helvetius was the tie of connection between the
Abbe Morellet and Franklin. Indeed, in the letter to Franklin with respect
to the cats, the Abbe was quite as candid about expressing his partiality
for one form of spirits as Franklin was in his unblushing eulogy of wine.
He did not know, he said, what duties his cats, in the unsettled condition
of the commercial relations between France and the United States, would be
made to pay on arriving at Philadelphia; "and then," he continued, "if my
vessel should find nothing to load with among you but grain, it could not
touch at our islands to take in sugar, or to bring me back good rum either,
which I love much."
When the Abbe de la Roche made a gift to Franklin of a volume of Helvetius'
poems, Franklin was quick to give him a recompense in the form of a little
drinking song which he had composed some forty years before. The plan of
this poem is for the chorus, whenever the singer dwells upon any other
source of gratification, to insist so vociferously upon friends and a
bottle as the highest as to finally, so to speak, drown the singer out.
Thus:
SINGER
"Fair Venus calls; her voice obey,
In beauty's arms spend night and day.
The joys of love all joys excel,
And loving's certainly doing well.
CHORUS
"Oh! no!
Not so!
For honest souls know,
Friends and a bottle still bear the bell."
In a letter to William Carmichael, enclosing his brilliant little
bagatelle, _The Ephemera_, Franklin described Madame Brillon in these
terms:
The person to whom it was addressed is Madame Brillon,
a lady of most respectable character and pleasing
conversation; mistress of an amiable family in this
neighbourhood, with which I spend an evening twice in
every week. She has, among other elegant
accomplishments, that of an excellent musician; and,
with her daughters, who sing prettily, and some friends
who play, she kindly entertains me and my grand son
with little concerts, a cup of tea, and a game of
chess. I call this _my Opera_, for I rarely go to the
Opera at Paris.
Madame Brillon was the wife of a public functionary much older than
herself, who yet, as her own letters to Franklin divulge, did not feel that
strict fidelity to her was necessary to soften the difference in their
ages.
My father [she wrote on one occasion to Franklin],
marriage in this country is made by weight of gold. On
one end of the scale is placed the fortune of a boy, on
the other that of a girl; when equality is found the
affair is ended to the satisfaction of the relatives.
One does not dream of consulting taste, age,
congeniality of character; one marries a young girl
whose heart is full of youth's fire and its cravings to
a man who has used them up; then one exacts that this
woman be virtuous--my friend, this story is mine, and
of how many others! I shall do my best that it may not
be that of my daughters, but alas, shall I be mistress
of their fate?
The correspondence between Madame Brillon and Franklin was very voluminous.
Among the Franklin papers in the possession of the American Philosophical
Society, there are no less than 119 letters from her to him, and in the
same collection there are also the rough drafts of some of his letters in
French to her. More than one of them are marked with corrections by her
hand. Repeated statements of hers show that she took a very indulgent view
of his imperfect mastery of the French language. When he sent to the
Brillons his French translation of his _Dialogue between the Gout and M.
Franklin_, she returned it to him, "corrected and made worse in several
particulars by a savant, and devoted to destruction by the critical notes
of a woman who is no savant," and she took occasion at the same time to
say:
Your dialogue has greatly amused me, but your corrector
of French has spoiled your work. Believe me, leave your
productions as they are, use words which mean
something, and laugh at the grammarians who enfeeble
all your phrases with their purisms. If I had the
brains, I should utter a dire diatribe against those
who dare to touch you up, even if it were the Abbe de
la Roche, or my neighbor Veillard.
And after reading _The Whistle_ of Franklin, she wrote to him, "M. Brillon
has laughed heartily over the Whistle: we find that what you call your bad
French often gives a piquant flavor to your narrative by reason of a
certain turn of phraseology and the words you invent."
It may well be doubted whether there is anything more brilliant in literary
history than the letters which make up the correspondence between Madame
Brillon and Franklin, and the marvel is that the intellectual quality of
his letters should, in every respect, be as distinctly French as that of
hers. His easy, fleeting touch, his unflagging vivacity, his wit, his
fertility of invention, his amative coloring are all as thoroughly French
as bonbons or champagne. The tame domesticity of his forty-nine years of
sober American wedlock, the calm, well-regulated flow of his thoughts and
habits in conservative England, under the roof of Mrs. Stevenson, and at
the country seat of the "Good Bishop," the Philosophy of Poor Richard, the
Art of Virtue, are exchanged for a character which, except when a suitable
match was to be found for M. Franklinet, as Madame Brillon called William
Temple Franklin, apparently took no account of anything but the pursuit of
pleasure, as pleasure was pursued by the people, who have, of all others,
most nearly succeeded in giving to it the rank of a respectable divinity.
In all the letters of Franklin to Madame Brillon, there is not a sentiment
with a characteristic American or English inflection in it. How far his
approaches to the beautiful and clever wife of M. Brillon were truly
erotic, and how far merely the conventional courtship of a gifted but aged
man, who had survived everything, that belongs to passion but its language,
it is impossible to say. We only know that, if his gallantry was specious
merely, he maintained it with a degree of pertinacity, which there is only
too much reason to believe might have had a different issue if it had been
more youthful and genuine. A handsome, talented Frenchwoman, of the
eighteenth century, burdened with a faithless husband, not too old for the
importunity of a heart full, to use her own expression, of youth's fire and
cravings, and tolerant enough to sit on an admirer's knees, and to write
responsive replies to letters from him, accompanied by a perpetual refrain
of sexuality, would, to say the least, have been in considerable danger of
forgetting her marriage vows if her Colin had been younger. As it was, the
tenderness of Madame Brillon for her "cher Papa" appears to have produced
no results worse than a series of letters from her pen, as finished as
enamel, which show that in every form of defensive warfare, literary or
amorous, she was quite a match for the great man, who was disposed to
forget how long he had lingered in a world which has nothing but a laugh
for the efforts of December to pass itself off as May.
"Do you know, my dear Papa," she wrote to him on one occasion, "that people
have criticized my pleasant habit of sitting on your lap, and yours of
asking me for what I always refuse?" In this world, she assured him, she
would always be a gentle and virtuous woman, and the most that she would
promise was to be his wife in Paradise, if he did not ogle the maidens
there too much while waiting for her.
When the hardy resolution is once formed of reviewing the correspondence
between Franklin and Madame Brillon, the most difficult task is that of
compression.
What! [she wrote to "Monsieur Papa" from Nice, after
the capitulation of Cornwallis] You capture entire
armies in America, you burgoinise Cornwallis, you take
cannon, vessels, munitions of war, men, horses, etc.,
etc. you capture everything and from everybody, and the
gazette alone brings it to the knowledge of your
friends, who befuddle themselves with drinking to your
health, to that of Washington, of Independence, of the
King of France, of the Marquis de la Fayette, of the
Mrs: de Rochambault, Chalelux etc., etc. while you
do not exhibit a sign of life to them; yet you should
be a bon vivant at this time, although you rarely err
in that respect, and you are surely twenty years
younger because of this good news, which ought to bring
us a lasting peace after a glorious war.
To this letter, Franklin replied on Christmas Day of the year 1781, the
birthday of the Dauphin of Heaven, he called it in the letter. He was very
sensible, he said, to the greatness of their victory, but war was full of
vicissitudes and uncertainty, and he played its game with the same evenness
of temper that she had seen him bring to the good and bad turns of a game
of chess. That was why he had said so little of the surrender, and had only
remarked that nothing could make him perfectly happy under certain
circumstances. The point, of course, was that still another capitulation
was essential to his happiness. He then proceeds to tell Madame Brillon
that, everywhere from Paris to Versailles, everyone spoke of her with
respect, and some with affection and even admiration; which was music to
his ears.
I often pass before your house [he adds]. It wears a
desolate look to me. Heretofore, I have broken the
commandment in coveting it along with my neighbour's
wife. Now I do not covet it. Thus I am the less a
sinner. But with regard to the wife, I always find
these commandments very inconvenient, and I am sorry
that we are cautioned to practise them. Should you find
yourself in your travels at the home of St. Peter, ask
him to recall them, as intended only for the Jews, and
as too irksome for good Christians.
These specimens are true to the language of the entire correspondence, but
further excerpts from it will not be amiss for the purpose of enabling us
to realize how agreeable the flirtation between the two must have been to
have produced such a lengthy correspondence despite the fact that Franklin
visited Madame Brillon at least every Wednesday and Saturday.
On Nov. 2, 1778, she wrote to Franklin as follows:
The hope that I had of seeing you here, my dear Papa,
has kept me from writing to you for Saturday's tea.
Hope is the remedy for all our ills. If one suffers,
one hopes for the end of the trouble; if one is with
friends, one hopes to remain with them always; if one
is away from them, one hopes to rejoin them,--and this
is the only hope that is left to me. I shall count the
days, the hours, the moments; each moment gone brings
me nearer to you. We like to grow older when it is the
only means of reuniting us to those whom we love. The
person, who takes life thus, seeks unceasingly to
shorten it; he plans, desires; without the future, it
seems to him that he has nothing. When my children are
grown up--in ten years--the trees in my garden will
shade me. The years slip by, then one regrets them. I
might have done such and such a thing, one says then.
Had I not been only twenty-five years old, I should not
have done the foolish thing of which I now repent. The
wise man alone enjoys the present, does not regret the
past, and awaits peacefully the future. The wise man,
who, like you, my Papa, has passed his youth in
acquiring knowledge and enlightening his fellow-men,
and his mature years in obtaining liberty for them,
brings a complaisant eye to bear on the past, enjoys
the present, and awaits the reward of his labors in the
future; but how many are wise? I try to become so, and
am so in some respects: I take no account of wealth,
vanity has little hold upon my heart; I like to do my
duty; I freely forgive society its errors and
injustices. But I love my friends with an idolatry that
often does me much harm: a prodigious imagination, a
soul of fire will always get the better of all my plans
and thoughts. I see, Papa, that I must never lay claim
to any but the one perfection of loving the most that
is possible. May this quality make you love your
daughter always!... Come, you always know how to
combine a great measure of wisdom with a touch of
roguishness; you ask Brillon for news of me at the very
moment when you are receiving a letter from me; you
play the part of the neglected one, just when you are
being spoiled, and then you deny it like a madman when
the secret is discovered. Oh, I have news of you!
... Mama, my children, and Mlle. Jupin present their
respects to you. May I venture to beg you to give my
kind regards to Mr. Franklinet?
Another letter in the same vein from Madame Brillon to Franklin bears date
May 11, 1779:
You are quite right, my good Papa, we should find true
happiness only in peace of mind; it is not in our power
to change the nature of those with whom we live, nor to
check the course of the contradictions that surround
us. It is a wise man who speaks, and who tries to
comfort his too sensitive daughter by telling her the
truth. Oh, my father, I beseech your friendship, your
healthy philosophy; my heart hears you and is
submissive to you. Give me strength to take the place
of an indifference that your child can never feel. But
admit, my friend, that for one who knows how to love,
ingratitude is a frightful misfortune; that it is hard
for a woman who would give her life without hesitation
to insure her husband's happiness to see the results of
her exertions and her longings wiped out by intrigue,
and falsity. Time will make everything right; my Papa
has said so, and I believe it. But my Papa has also
said that time is the stuff that life is made of. _My_
life, my friend, is made of a fine and thin stuff, that
grief rends cruelly; if I had anything to reproach
myself with, I should long have ceased to exist. My
soul is pure, simple, frank. I dare to tell my Papa so;
I dare to tell him that it is worthy of him; I dare
still to assure him that my conduct, which he has
deemed wise, will not belie itself, that I shall await
justice with patience, that I shall follow the advice
of my worthy friend with steadiness and confidence.
Adieu, you whom I love so much--my kind Papa. Never
call me anything but "my daughter." Yesterday you
called me "Madame," and my heart shrank, I examined
myself, to see whether I had done you any wrong, or if
I had some failings that you would not tell me of.
Pardon, my friend; I am not visiting you with a
reproach, I am accusing myself of a weakness. I was
born much too sensitive for my happiness and for that
of my friends; cure me, or pity me; if you can, do one
or the other.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, you will come to tea, will you
not? Believe me, my Papa, that the pleasure I feel in
receiving you is shared by my husband, my children, and
my friends; I cannot doubt it, and I assure you of it.
Franklin's reply to this letter is for a brief moment that of a real father
rather than Monsieur Papa. This reminds us that, in one of her letters to
him, she states that in her own father she had lost her first and best
friend, and recalled the fact that Franklin had told her of the custom of
certain savages, who adopt the prisoners, that they capture in war, and
make them take the place of the relations whom they have lost. In answer to
her statement that ingratitude is a frightful misfortune, he says: "That is
true--to ingrates--but not to their benefactors. You have conferred
benefits on those that you have believed worthy of them; you have,
therefore, done your duty, as it is a part of our duty to be kindly, and
you ought to be satisfied with that and happy in the reflection." This was
followed by the advice to his "very dear and always lovable daughter" to
continue to fulfill all her duties as a good mother, a good wife, a good
friend, a good neighbor, a good Christian, etc. We shall see a little later
on what he deemed a part of the duty of a good charitable Christian to be.
The letter terminates with an apology for his bad French. "It may," he
said, "disgust you, you who write that charming language with so much
purity and elegance. But, if you can in the end decipher my awkward and
improper expressions, you will, at least, perhaps, experience the kind of
pleasure that we find in solving enigmas or discovering secrets."
His letter transmitting his _Dialogue with the Gout_ to Madame Brillon was
not so decorous. It was in it that he had a word to say about the other
kind of Christian conduct that he was in the habit of enjoining upon her. A
part of this letter was the following:
One of the characters in your story, namely, the Gout
appeared to me to reason well enough, with the
exception of his supposition that mistresses have had
something to do with producing this painful malady. I
myself believe the entire contrary, and this is my
method of reasoning. When I was a young man, and
enjoyed the favors of the sex more freely than at
present, I had no gout. Therefore, if the ladies of
Passy had had more of that kind of Christian charity,
that I have often recommended to you in vain, I would
not have the gout at present. This seems to me to be
good logic.
I am much better. I suffer little pain, but I am very
feeble. I can, as you see, joke a little, but I cannot
be really gay before I hear that your precious health
is re-established.
I send you my Dialogue in the hope that it may amuse
you at times.
Many thanks for the three last volumes of Montaigne
that I return.
The visit of your ever lovable family yesterday evening
has done me much good. My God! how I love them all from
the Grandmother and the father to the smallest child.
The reply of Madame Brillon was in kindred terms:
Saturday, 18th November, 1780.
There would be many little things indeed to criticise
in your logic, which you fortify so well, my dear Papa.
"When I was a young man," you say, "and enjoyed the
favors of the sex more freely than at present, I had no
gout." "Therefore," one might reply to this, "when I
threw myself out of the window, I did not break my
leg." Therefore, you could have the gout without having
deserved it, and you could have well deserved it, as I
believe, and not have had it.
If this last argument is not so brilliant as the
others, it is clear and sure; what is neither clear nor
sure are the arguments of philosophers who insist that
everything that happens in the world is necessary to
the general movement of the universal machine. I
believe that the machine would go neither better nor
worse if you did not have the gout, and if I were
forever rid of my nervous troubles.
I do not see what help, more or less, these little
incidents can give to the wheels that turn this world
at random, and I know that my little machine goes very
much the worse for them. What I know very well besides,
is that pain sometimes becomes mistress of reason, and
that patience alone can overcome these two nuisances. I
have as much of it as I can, and I advise you, my
friend, to have the same amount. When frosts have cast
a gloom over the earth, a bright sun makes us forget
them. We are in the midst of frosts, and must wait
patiently for this bright sun, and, while waiting for
it, amuse ourselves in the moments when weakness and
pain leave us some rest. _This_, my dear Papa, is _my_
logic....
Adieu, my good Papa. My big husband will take my letter
to you; he is very happy to be able to go to see you.
For me, nothing remains but the faculty of loving my
friends. You surely do not doubt that I shall do my
best for you, even to Christian charity, that is to
say, with the exception of your Christian charity.
She writes a brief letter to Franklin on New Year's Day of 1781:
If I had a good head and good legs--if, in short, I had
everything that I lack,--I should have come, like a
good daughter, to wish a happy New Year to the best of
papas. But I have only a very tender heart to love him
well, and a rather bad pen to scribble him that this
year, as well as last year, and all the years of my
life, I shall love him, myself alone, as much as all
the others that love him, put together.
Brillon and the children present their respects to the
kind Papa; and we also send a thousand messages for M.
Franklinet.
Some four years later, after Franklin had vainly endeavored to marry Temple
Franklin to a daughter of Madame Brillon, we find him writing a letter of
congratulation to her upon the happy _accouchement_ of her daughter. It
elicits a reply in which the cheek of the "beautiful and benignant nature,"
of which she speaks, undergoes a considerable amount of artificial
coloring.
2nd December, 1784.