but, if you would give me still more, remain in France
until you see my sixth generation. I only ask you for
fifteen or sixteen years: my granddaughter will be
marriageable early; she is fair and strong. I am
tasting a new feeling, my good Papa, to which my heart
surrenders itself with pleasure, it is so sweet to
love. I have never been able to conceive how beings
exist who are such enemies to themselves as to reject
friendship. They are ingrates, we say; well we are
deceived; that is a little hard sometimes, but we are
not always so; and to feel oneself incapable of
returning the treachery affords a satisfaction of
itself that consoles us for it.
My little nurse is charming and fresh as a morning
rose. The first days the child had difficulty,... but
patience and the mother's courage overcame it; all goes
well now, and nothing could be more interesting than
this picture of a young and pretty person nursing a
superb child, the father uninterruptedly occupied with
the spectacle, and joining his attentions to those of
his wife. My eyes are unceasingly moist, and my heart
rejoices, my kind Papa. You realize so well the value
of all that belongs to beautiful and benignant nature
that I owe you these details. My daughter charges me
with her thanks and compliments to you; _ma Cadette_
and my men present their regards, and as for me, my
friend, I beg you to believe that my friendship and my
existence will always be one as respects you.
Once Franklin sought to corner Madame Brillon with a story, which makes us
feel for a moment as if the rod of transformation was beginning to work a
backward spell, and the Benjamin Franklin of Craven Street and Independence
Hall to be released from the spell of the French Circe:
To make you better realize the force of my
demonstration that you do not love me, I commence with
a little story:
A beggar asked a rich Bishop for a louis by way of
alms. You are wild. No one gives a louis to a beggar.
An ecu then. No. That is too much. A liard then,--or
your benediction. My benediction! Yes, I will give it
to you. No, I will not accept it. For if it was worth a
liard, you would not be willing to give it to me. That
was how this Bishop loved his neighbor. That was his
charity! And, were I to scrutinize yours, I would not
find it much greater. I am incredibly hungry for it and
you have given me nothing to eat. I was a stranger, and
I was almost as love-sick as Colin when you were
singing, and you have neither taken me in, nor cured
me, nor eased me.
You who are as rich as an Archbishop in all the
Christian and moral virtues, and could sacrifice a
small share of some of them without visible loss, you
tell me that it is asking too much, and that you are
not willing to do it. That is your charity to a poor
wretch, who once enjoyed affluence, and is
unfortunately reduced to soliciting alms. Nevertheless,
you say you love him. But you would not give him your
friendship if it involved the expenditure of the least
little morsel, of the value of a liard, of your wisdom.
But see how nimbly the coquette eludes her pursuer:
MY DEAR PAPA: Your bishop was a niggard and your beggar
a queer enough fellow. You are a logician all the
cleverer because you argue in a charming way, and
almost awaken an inclination to yield to your unsound
arguments founded on a false principle. Is it of Dr.
Franklin, the celebrated philosopher, the profound
statesman, that a woman speaks with so much
irreverence? Yes, this erudite man, this legislator,
has his infirmities (it is the weakness, moreover, of
great men: he has taken full advantage of it). But let
us go into the matter.
To prove that I do not love you, my good Papa, you
compare yourself to a beggar who asked alms from a
bishop. Now, the role of a bishop is not to refuse to
give to beggars when they are really in want; he honors
himself in doing good. But in truth the kind of charity
which you ask of me so amusingly can be found
everywhere. You will not grow thin because of my
refusals! What would you think of your beggar, if, the
bishop having given him the "louis" which he asked, he
had grumbled because he did not get two? That, however,
is your case, my good friend.
You adopted me as your daughter, I chose you for my
father: what do you expect of me? Friendship! Well, I
love you as a daughter should love her father. The
purest, the most respectful, the tenderest affection
for you fills my soul; you asked me for a "louis"; I
gave it to you, and yet you murmur at not getting
another one, which does not belong to me. It is a
treasure which has been entrusted to me, my good Papa;
I guard it and will always guard it carefully. Even if
you were like "Colin sick," in truth I could not cure
you; and nevertheless, whatever you may think or say,
no one in this world loves you more than I.
In this letter she puts him off with the teasing assurance of friendship.
In another, written from Marseilles, it is with other charming women that
she mocks him:
I received on my arrival here, my good Papa, your
letter of October 1st. It has given me keen pleasure; I
found in it evidences of your friendship and a tinge of
that gayety and gallantry which make all women love
you, because you love them all. Your proposition to
carry me on your wings, if you were the angel Gabriel,
made me laugh; but I would not accept it, although I am
no longer very young nor a virgin. That angel was a sly
fellow and your nature united to his would become too
dangerous. I should be afraid of miracles happening,
and miracles between women and angels might well not
always bring a redeemer....
I have arranged, my good friend, to write alternately
to my "great neighbor" and to you; the one to whom I
shall not have written will kindly tell the other that
I love him with all my heart, and when your turn comes
you will add an embrace for the good wife of our
neighbor, for her daughter, for little Mother Caillot,
for all the gentle and pretty women of my acquaintance
whom you may meet. You see that not being able to amuse
you, either by my singing or by chess, I seek to
procure you other pleasures. If you had been at Avignon
with us, it is there you would have wished to embrace
people. The women there are charming; I thought of you
every time I saw one of them. Adieu, my good Papa; I do
not relate to you the details of my journey, as I have
written of them to our neighbor, who will communicate
them to you. I limit myself to assuring you of the most
constant and the tenderest friendship on my part.
At times the pursuer is too badly afflicted with gout in his legs to
maintain the pursuit, and the pursued has to come to his assistance to keep
the flirtation going:
How are you, my good Papa? Never has it cost me so much
to leave you; every evening it seems to me that you
would be very glad to see me, and every evening I think
of you. On Monday, the 21st, I shall go to meet you
again; I hope that you will then be very firm on your
feet, and that the teas of Wednesday and Saturday, and
that of Sunday morning, will regain all their
brilliance. I will bring you _la bonne eveque_. My fat
husband will make you laugh, our children will laugh
together, our great neighbor will quiz, the Abbes La
Roche and Morellet will eat all the butter, Mme. Grand,
her amiable niece, and M. Grand will help the company
out, Pere Pagin will play _God of Love_ on his violin,
I the march on the Piano, and you _Petits Oiseaux_ on
the armonica.
O! my friend, let us see in the future fine and strong
legs for you, and think no more of the bad one that has
persecuted you so much. After what is bad, one enjoys
what is good more; life is sown with both, which she
changes unceasingly. What she cannot keep from being
equal and uniform is my tenderness for you, that time,
place, and events will never alter.
My mother and all my family wish to be remembered to
you.
I have had some news of you through our neighbor, but I
must absolutely have some from you.
Amusingly enough, M. Brillon contributes his part to the restoration of the
gouty legs to something like normal activity.
The visits of your good husband during my sickness
[wrote Franklin to Madame Brillon] have been very
agreeable to me. His conversation has eased and
enlivened me. I regret that, instead of seeking it when
I have been at your home, I have lost so much time in
playing chess. He has many stories and always applies
them well. If he has despoiled you of some, you can
repeat them all the same, for they will always please
me, coming from your mouth.
There is another letter from Madame Brillon to Franklin which drew a reply
from him, in which he ascended into the Christian heaven with almost as
much literary facility as marked his entrance into the Pagan Elysium. Her
letter was written during an absence from home:
Here I am reduced to writing to you, my good Papa, and
to telling you that I love you. It was sweeter no doubt
to let you see it in my eyes. How am I going to spend
the Wednesdays and Saturdays? No teas, no chess, no
music, no hope of seeing or embracing my good papa! It
seems to me that the privation which I experience from
your absence would suffice to make me change my views,
were I inclined to materialism.
Happiness is so uncertain, so full of crosses, that the
deep conviction that we shall be happier in another
life can alone tide us over the trials of this one. In
Paradise we shall be reunited, never to leave each
other again! We shall there live on roasted apples
only; the music will be made up of Scotch airs; all
parties will be given over to chess, so that no one may
be disappointed; every one will speak the same
language; the English will be neither unjust nor wicked
there; the women will not be coquettes, the men will be
neither jealous nor too gallant; "King John" will be
left to eat his apples in peace; perhaps he will be
decent enough to offer some to his neighbors--who
knows? since we shall want for nothing in paradise! We
shall never suffer from gout or nervous troubles there.
Mr. Mesmer will content himself with playing on the
armonica, without wearying us with the electric fluid;
ambition, envy, snobbery, jealousy, prejudice, all
these will vanish at the sound of the trumpet. A
lasting, sweet and peaceful friendship will animate
every gathering. Every day we shall love one another,
in order that we may love one another still more the
day after; in a word, we shall be completely happy. In
the meantime, let us get all the good we can out of
this poor world of ours. I am far from you, my good
Papa; I look forward to the time of our meeting, and I
am pleased to think that your regrets and desires equal
mine.
My mother and my children send you a thousand tender
messages of respect; we should all like to have you
here. May I venture to ask you to remember us to your
grandson?
And this was the deft reply of Franklin which has come down to us in French
corrected by Madame Brillon's hand:
Since you have assured me that we shall meet each other
again, and shall recognize each other, in Paradise, I
have reflected continually on our arrangements in that
country; for I have great confidence in your
assurances, and I believe implicitly what you believe.
Probably more than forty years will pass away, after my
arrival there, before you will follow me. I fear a
little that, in the course of such a long time, you may
forget me; that is why I have had thoughts of proposing
to you that you give me your word that you will not
renew your contract with M. Brillon. I would give you
mine at the same time to wait for you, but this
monsieur is so good, so generous to us--he loves
you--and we him--so well--that I can not think of this
proposition without some scruples of
conscience--however the idea of an eternity, in which I
should not be more favored than to be allowed to kiss
your hands, or your cheeks occasionally, and to pass
two or three hours in your sweet society at Wednesday
and Saturday evening parties, is frightful. In fine, I
can not make that proposal, but since, like all who
know you, I desire to see you happy in every respect,
we may agree to say nothing more about it at this time,
and to leave you at liberty to decide, when we are all
together again: there to determine the question as you
deem best for your happiness and ours; but, determine
it as you will, I feel that I shall love you eternally.
Should you reject me, perhaps, I shall pay my addresses
to Madame D'Hardancourt (the mother of Madame Brillon),
who might be glad to keep house for me. In that event I
should pass my domestic hours agreeably with her; and I
should be better prepared to see you. I should have
enough time in those forty years there to practise on
the armonica, and, perhaps, I should play well enough
to be worthy to accompany your pianoforte. We should
have little concerts from time to time, good father
Pagin would be of the company, your neighbor and his
dear family [M. Jupin], M. de Chaumont, M. B., M.
Jourdan, M. Grammont, Madame du Tartre, the little
mother, and some other select friends will be our
audience, and the dear, good girls, accompanied by some
other young angels, whose portraits you have already
given me, will sing hallelujahs with us; we shall eat
together apples of Paradise, roasted with butter and
nutmeg; and we shall pity them who are not dead.
In another letter, he complains that she shuts him out from everything
except a few civil and polite kisses such as she might give to some of her
small cousins.
All this, however, was but preliminary to the treaty, which the signer of
the Treaty of Alliance between France and the United States formally
submitted to her in this letter.
Among the articles of this treaty were to be these:
Article 6. And the said Mr. F. on his part stipulates
and covenants that he is to call at the home of M'de B.
as often as he pleases.
Article 7. That he is to remain there as long as he
pleases.
Article 8. And that when he is with her, he is to do
what he pleases.
He did not have much hope, he said, of obtaining her consent to the eighth
article.
In another letter, the aged lover tells Madame Brillon that she must not
accuse others of being responsible for his having left her half an hour
sooner than usual. The truth was that he was very much fatigued for special
reasons that he mentions, and thought it more decent to leave her than to
fall asleep, which he was beginning to do on a bench in her garden after
her descent into it. After all a half-hour with an old man, who could not
make the best use of it, was a thing of very little importance. Saturday
evening, he would remain with her until she wished him to go, and, in spite
of her usual polite phrases, he would know the time by her refusal to give
him a little kiss.
With another note, he sent to Madame Brillon his Essay on the Morals of
Chess. It was only proper that it should be dedicated to her, he said, as
its good advice was copied from her generous and magnanimous way of playing
the game. In the same letter, he stated that his grandson had inspected the
house that she had urged him to apply for, but, true still to his adopted
character, he said, "He finds it too magnificent for simple Republicans."
In another letter, he told Madame Brillon that he loved to live, because it
seemed to him that there was much more pleasure than pain in existence. We
should not blame Providence rashly. She should reflect how many even of our
duties it had made pleasures, and that it had been good enough, moreover,
to call several pleasures sins to enhance our enjoyment of them.
One more letter from Madame Brillon and we shall let her retire from the
chess-board with the credit of having proved herself fully a match for
Franklin in the longest and most absorbing game of chess that he played in
France:
25th of December at Nice.
The atonement is adequate, my dear Papa. I shall no
longer call you _Monseigneur_ nor even _Monsieur_. My
petition succeeded before reaching you; our tears are
dried. You love us, you tell us so; you are in good
health, and are as roguish as ever, since you are
planning to steal me from Brillon, and to take me on a
trip to America without letting anyone know it.
Everything is as usual. I recognize your fine mask, and
I am wholly satisfied. But, my good Papa, why say that
you write French badly,--that your pleasantries in that
language are only nonsense? To make an academic
discourse, one must be a good grammarian; but to write
to our friends all we need is a heart, and you combine
with the best heart, my lovable Papa, when you wish,
the soundest ethics, a lively imagination, and that
roguishness, so pleasant, which shows that the wisest
man in the world allows his wisdom to be perpetually
broken against the rocks of femininity. Write to me,
therefore, write to me often and much, or from spite I
shall learn English. I should want to know it quickly,
and that would hurt me as I have been forbidden all
study, and you would be the cause of my ills, for
having refused me a few lines of your bad French, which
my family and I--and we are not simpletons--consider
very good; ask my neighbors, M. d'Estaing, Mme.
Helvetius and her abbes, if it would be right for you
to prejudice the improvement which the sun here has
caused in my health, for the sake of a little _amour
propre_ which is beneath My Lord the Ambassador,
Benjamin Franklin.
One more letter from Franklin, and we shall cease to walk upon eggs. The
French drapery is gone and nothing is left but Saxon nudity:
I am charm'd with the goodness of my spiritual guide,
and resign myself implicitly to her Conduct, as she
promises to lead me to heaven in so delicious a Road
when I could be content to travel thither even in the
roughest of all ways with the pleasure of her company.
How kindly partial to her Penitent in finding him, on
examining his conscience, guilty of only one capital
sin and to call that by the gentle name of Foible!
I lay fast hold of your promise to absolve me of all
Sins past, present, & future, on the easy & pleasing
Condition of loving God, America and my guide above all
things. I am in rapture when I think of being absolv'd
of the future.
People commonly speak of Ten Commandments.--I have been
taught that there are twelve. The first was increase &
multiply & replenish the earth. The twelfth is, A new
Commandment I give unto you, _that you love one
another_. It seems to me that they are a little
misplaced, And that the last should have been the
first. However I never made any difficulty about that,
but was always willing to obey them both whenever I had
an opportunity. Pray tell me dear Casuist, whether my
keeping religiously these two commandments tho' not in
the Decalogue, may not be accepted in Compensation for
my breaking so often one of the ten, I mean that which
forbids coveting my neighbour's wife, and which I
confess I break constantly God forgive me, as often as
I see or think of my lovely Confessor, and I am afraid
I should never be able to repent of the Sin even if I
had the full Possession of her.
And now I am Consulting you upon a Case of Conscience I
will mention the Opinion of a certain Father of the
church which I find myself willing to adopt though I am
not sure it is orthodox. It is this, that the most
effectual way to get rid of a certain Temptation is, as
often as it returns, to comply with and satisfy it.
Pray instruct me how far I may venture to practice upon
this Principle?
But why should I be so scrupulous when you have
promised to absolve me of the future?
Adieu my charming Conductress and believe me ever with
the sincerest Esteem & affection.
Your most obed't hum. Serv.
B F
It would be easy enough to treat this correspondence too seriously. When we
recall the social sympathies and diversions which drew the parties to it
together, the advanced age of Franklin, the friendly relations sustained by
him to all the members of the Brillon household, his attempt to bring about
a matrimonial union between Temple Franklin and the daughter of Madame
Brillon, the good-humored complaisance of M. Brillon, the usages of
Parisian society at that time, the instinctive ease with which Franklin
adopted the tone of any land in which he happened to be, and the sportive
grace and freedom, brought by his wit and literary dexterity to every
situation that invited their exercise, we might well infer that, perhaps,
after all, on his part, as well on that of the clever coquette, whose
bodkin was quite as keen as his sword, it was understood that the _liaison_
was to be only a paper one--an encounter of wit rather than of love. From
first to last, the attitude of Madame Brillon towards Franklin was simply
that of a beautiful and brilliant woman, to whom coquetry was an art, and
whose intellectual activity had been stimulated, and vanity gratified, by
the homage of a brilliant, magnetic and famous man, who possessed to a
remarkable degree the faculty of rendering his splendid intellectual powers
subservient to purely social uses. It was no slight thing to a woman such
as Madame Brillon to be the _Vainqueur du Vainqueur de la Terre_, and
little less than this did all France at that time insist that Franklin was.
There is nothing in her letters to Franklin to indicate that she ever
really had any thought of allowing him any greater degree of intimacy with
her than he actually enjoyed. On that point she was apparently as firm as
she was in her courteous and kindly but inflexible opposition to a marriage
between her daughter and William Temple Franklin.
I despise slanderers [she wrote to Franklin on one
occasion], and am at peace with myself, but that is not
enough, one must submit to what is called _propriety_
(that word varies in each century in each country) to
sit less often on your knees. I shall certainly love
you none the less, nor will our hearts be more or less
pure; but we shall close the mouth of the malicious,
and it is no slight thing even for the sage to silence
them.
On the other hand there is much to support the idea that the motive at the
back of Franklin's letters to Madame Brillon was very much the same as that
which inspired the _Journey to the Elysian Fields_ and the _Ephemera_. They
were to a great extent, at any rate, mere literary bagatelles as those
performances were--the offerings of an opulent wit and fancy at the shrine
of beauty and fashion, which to be successful in an academic sense had to
be informed by the spirit, and attuned to the note, of the time and place.
All the same, the letters from Franklin to Madame Brillon are painful
reading. Like not a little else in his life, they tend to confirm the
impression that upright, courageous, public-spirited, benevolent, loving
and faithful in friendship as he was, on the sensual side of his nature he
was lamentably callous to the moral laws and conventions and the personal
and social refinements which legitimize and dignify the physical
intercourse of the sexes. The pinchbeck glitter, the deceitful vacuity of
his moral regimen and _Art of Virtue_, assume an additional meaning, when
we see him mumbling the cheek of Madame Brillon, and month after month and
year after year writing to her in strains of natural or affected
concupiscence. It was things of this sort which have assisted in
strengthening the feeling, not uncommon, that Franklin's _Art of Virtue_
was a purely counterfeit thing, and the moralist himself an untrustworthy
guide to righteous conduct.
In a letter to M. de Veillard, Franklin after his return to America from
France referred to the Brillon family as "that beloved family." Restored to
his home surroundings, he forgot his French lines, and was again as soberly
American as ever in thought and speech. Who would recognize the lover of
Madame Brillon in this russet picture that he paints of himself in his
eighty-third year in a letter to her?
You have given me Pleasure by informing me of the
Welfare and present agreable Circumstances of yourself
and Children; and I am persuaded that your Friendship
for me will render a similar Account of my Situation
pleasing to you. I am in a Country where I have the
happiness of being universally respected and beloved,
of which three successive annual Elections to the Chief
Magistracy, in which Elections the Representatives of
the People in Assembly and the Supreme Court join'd and
were unanimous, is the strongest Proof; this is a Place
of Profit as well as of Honour; and my Friends
chearfully assist in making the Business as easy to me
as possible.
After a word more with regard to the dwelling and the dutiful family, so
often mentioned in his twilight letters, he concludes in this manner:
My Rents and Incomes are amply sufficient for all my
present Occasions; and if no unexpected Misfortunes
happen during the time I have to live, I shall leave a
handsome Estate to be divided among my Relatives. As to
my Health, it continues the same, or rather better than
when I left Passy; but being now in my 83rd year, I do
not expect to continue much longer a Sojourner in this
world, and begin to promise myself much Gratification
of my Curiosity in soon visiting some other.
In this letter, Franklin was looking forward, we hardly need say, to a very
different world from the one where Madame Brillon was to be the second Mrs.
Franklin, and they were to eat together apples of Paradise roasted with
butter and nutmeg. And it is only just to the memory of Madame Brillon to
recall the genuine words, so unlike the tenor of her former letters to
Franklin, in which she bade him farewell, when he was leaving the shores of
France:
I had so full a heart yesterday in leaving you that I
feared for you and myself a grief-stricken moment which
could only add to the pain which our separation causes
me, without proving to you further the tender and
unalterable affection that I have vowed to you for
always. Every day of my life I shall recall that a
great man, a sage, was willing to be my friend; my
wishes will follow him everywhere; my heart will regret
him incessantly; incessantly I shall say I passed eight
years with Doctor Franklin; they have flown, and I
shall see him no more! Nothing in the world could
console me for this loss, except the thought of the
peace and happiness that you are about to find in the
bosom of your family.
It was to the Comtesse d'Houdetot of Rousseau's _Confessions_, however,
that Franklin was indebted for his social apotheosis in France. In a
letter to her after his return to America, he calls her "ma chere &
toujours--amiable Amie," and declares that the memory of her friendship and
of the happy hours that he had passed in her sweet society at Sanois, had
often caused him to regret the distance which made it impossible for them
to ever meet again. In her letters to him, after his return to America, she
seeks in such words as "homage," "veneration" and "religious tenderness" to
express the feelings with which he had inspired her. In these letters,
there are also references to the _fete champetre_ which she gave in his
honor at her country seat at Sanois on the 12th day of April, in the year
1781, and which was one of the celebrated events of the time. When it was
announced that Franklin's carriage was approaching the chateau, the
Countess and a distinguished retinue of her relations set out on foot to
meet him. At a distance of about half a mile from the chateau, they came
upon him, and gathered around the doors of his carriage, and escorted it to
the grounds of the chateau, where the Countess herself assisted Franklin to
alight. "The venerable sage," said a contemporary account, "with his gray
hairs flowing down upon his shoulders, his staff in his hand, the
spectacles of wisdom on his nose, was the perfect picture of true
philosophy and virtue." As soon as Franklin had descended from the
carriage, the whole company grouped themselves around him, and the Countess
declaimed, with proper emphasis we may be sure, these lines:
"Soul of heroes and wise men,
Oh, Liberty! First boon of the Gods!
Alas! It is too remotely that we pay thee our vows;
It is only with sighs that we render homage
To the man who made happy his fellow-citizens."
All then wended their way through the gardens of the Countess to the
chateau, where they were soon seated at a noble feast. With the first
glass of wine, a soft air was played, and the Countess and her relations
rose to their feet, and sang in chorus these lines, which they repeated in
chorus after every succeeding glass of wine:
"Of Benjamin let us celebrate the renown,
Let us sing the good that he has done to mortals;
In America he will have altars,
And at Sanois we drink to his fame."
When the time for the second glass of wine came, the Countess sang this
quatrain:
"He gives back to human nature its rights,
To free it he would first enlighten it,
And virtue to make itself adored,
Assumed the form of Benjamin."
And at the third glass, the Vicomte d'Houdetot sang these words:
"William Tell was brave but savage,
More highly our dear Benjamin I prize,
While shaping the destiny of America,
At meat he laughs just as does your true sage."
And at the fourth glass, the Vicomtesse d'Houdetot sang these words:
"I say, live Philadelphia, too!
Freedom has its allurement for me;
In that country, I would gladly dwell,
Though neither ball nor comedy is there."
And at the fifth glass, Madame de Pernan sang these words:
"All our children shall learn of their mothers,
To love, to trust, and to bless you;
You teach that which may reunite
All the sons of men in the arms of one father."
And at the sixth glass, the aged Comte de Tressan sang these words:
"Live Sanois! 'Tis my Philadelphia.
When I see here its dear law-giver;
I grow young again in the heart of delight,
And I laugh, and I drink and list to Sophie."
And at the seventh glass, the Comte d'Apche sang these lines, in which some
violence was done to the facts of English History, and the French
Revolution was foreshadowed:
"To uphold that sacred charter
Which Edward accorded to the English,
I feel that there is no French Knight
Who does not desire to use his sword."
And so quatrain preceded glass and chorus followed quatrain until every
member of the eulogistic company had sung his or her song. The banqueters
then rose from the table, and the Countess, followed by her relations,
conducted Franklin to an arbor in her gardens, where he was presented with
a Virginia locust by her gardener, which he was asked to honor the family
by planting with his own hands. When he had done so, the Countess declaimed
some additional lines, which were afterwards inscribed upon a marble
pillar, erected near the tree:
"Sacred tree, lasting monument
Of the sojourn deigned to be made here by a sage,
Of these gardens henceforth the pride,
Receive here the just homage
Of our vows and of our incense;
And may you for all the ages,
Forever respected by time,
Live as long as his name, his laws and his deeds."
On their way back to the chateau, the concourse was met by a band which
played an accompaniment, while the Countess and her kinsfolk sang this
song:
"May this tree, planted by his benevolent hand,
Lifting up its new-born trunk,
Above the sterile elm,
By its odoriferous flower,
Make fragrant all this happy hamlet.
The lightning will lack power to strike it,
And will respect its summit and its branches,
'Twas Franklin who, by his prosperous labors,
Taught us to direct or to extinguish that,
While he was destroying other evils,
Still more for the earth's sake to be pitied."
This over, all returned to the chateau where they were engaged for some
time in agreeable conversation. In the late afternoon, Franklin was
conducted by the Countess and the rest to his carriage, and, when he was
seated, they gathered about the open door of the vehicle, and the Countess
addressed her departing guest in these words:
"Legislator of one world, and benefactor of two!
For all time mankind will owe thee its tribute,
And it is but my part that I here discharge
Of the debt that is thy due from all the ages."
The door of the carriage was then closed, and Franklin returned to Paris
duly deified but as invincibly sensible as ever.
Another French woman with whom Franklin was on terms of familiar affection
was the wife of his friend, Jean Baptiste Le Roy. His endearing term for
her was _petite femme de poche_ (little pocket wife), and, in a letter
after his return to Philadelphia, she assured him that, as long as his
_petite femme de poche_ had the breath of life, she would love him.
On one occasion, when he was in France, she wrote to him, asking him to
dine with her on Wednesday, and saying that she would experience great
pleasure in seeing and embracing him. Assuredly, he replied, he would not
fail her. He found too much pleasure in seeing her, and in hearing her
speak, and too much happiness, when he held her in his arms, to forget an
invitation so precious.
In another letter to her, after his return to America--the letter which
drew forth her declaration that her love for him would last as long as her
breath--he told her that she was very courageous to ascend so high in a
balloon, and very good, when she was so near heaven, not to think of
quitting her friends, and remaining with the angels. Competition might well
have shunned an effort to answer such a flourish as that in kind, but a
lady, who had been up in a balloon among the angels, was not the person to
lack courage for any experiment. She only regretted, she said, that the
balloon could not go very far, for, if it had been but able to carry her to
him, she _would have been_ among the angels, and would have given him
proofs of the respect and esteem for him, ineffaceably engraved upon her
heart. Sad to relate, in the same letter she tells Franklin that her
husband had proved hopelessly recreant to every principle of honor and good
feeling. We say, "sad to relate," not for general reasons only, but because
Franklin, when he had heard in 1772 that Le Roy was well and happily
married, had felicitated him on the event, and repeated his oft-asserted
statement that matrimony is the natural condition of man; though he omitted
this time his usual comparison of celibacy with the odd half of a pair of
scissors. The estrangement between his little pocket wife and her husband,
however, did not affect his feeling of devoted friendship for Jean Baptiste
Le Roy. Some two years and five months later, when the wild Walpurgis night
of the French Revolution was setting in, he wrote to Le Roy to find out why
he had been so long silent. "It is now more than a year," he said, "since
I have heard from my dear friend Le Roy. What can be the reason? Are you
still living? Or have the mob of Paris mistaken the head of a monopolizer
of knowledge, for a monopolizer of corn, and paraded it about the streets
upon a pole?" The fact that Le Roy, who was a physicist of great
reputation, was a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the
Royal Society, led Franklin in one of his letters to address him as his
"Dear double _Confrere_." Le Roy's three brothers, Pierre, Charles and
David were also friends of Franklin. Indeed, in a letter to Jean Baptiste,
Franklin spoke of David, to whom he addressed his valuable paper entitled
_Maritime Observations_, as "our common Brother."
Other friendships formed by Franklin with women in France were those with
Madame Lavoisier, Madame de Forbach and Mademoiselle Flainville. Madame
Lavoisier was first the wife of the famous chemist of that name, and, after
he was guillotined, during the French Revolution, the wife of the equally
famous Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. She painted a portrait of
Franklin, and sent it to him at Philadelphia.
It is allowed by those, who have seen it [he wrote to
her], to have great merit as a picture in every
respect; but what particularly endears it to me is the
hand that drew it. Our English enemies, when they were
in possession of this city (Philadelphia) and my house,
made a prisoner of my portrait, and carried it off with
them, leaving that of its companion, my wife, by
itself, a kind of widow. You have replaced the husband,
and the lady seems to smile as well pleased.
So his Eurydice, as soon as the enchantments of the French sorceress lost
their power, was re-united to him after all.
Among his French friends, Madame de Forbach, the Dowager Duchess of
Deux-Ponts, was conspicuous for the number of the presents that she made
to him. Among others, was the fine crab-tree walking stick, surmounted with
a gold head, wrought in the form of a cap of liberty, which he bequeathed
to Washington. Other gifts of hers are alluded to in a letter from Franklin
to her, acknowledging the receipt of a pair of scissors.
It is true [he said] that I can now neither walk abroad
nor write at home without having something that may
remind me of your Goodness towards me; you might have
added, that I can neither play at Chess nor drink Tea
without the same sensation: but these had slipt your
Memory. There are People who forget the Benefits they
receive, Mad'e de Forbach only those she bestows.
His only letter to Mademoiselle Flainville is addressed to "ma chere
enfant," and is signed "Your loving Papa." It helps, along with innumerable
other kindred scraps of evidence, to prove how infirm is the train of
reasoning which seeks to establish a parental tie between Franklin and
anyone simply upon the strength of his epistolary assumption of fatherhood.
He might as well be charged with polygamy because he addressed so many
persons as "my wife" or "ma femme." This letter also has its interest, as
exemplifying the natural manner in which he awaited the sedan chair that
was to bear him away from his fleshly tenement. "I have been harassed with
Illness this last Summer," he told her, "am grown old, near 83, and find
myself very infirm, so that I expect to be soon call'd for."
This is far from being a complete list of the French women with whom
Franklin was on terms of affectionate intimacy. To go no further, we know
that Madame Brillon, in addition to writing to him on one occasion, "Give
this evening to my amiable rival, Madame Helvetius, kiss her for yourself
and for me," granted him on another a power of attorney to kiss for her
until her return, whenever he saw them, her two neighbors, Le Veillard,
and her pretty neighbor, Caillot.
The truth is that Franklin had a host of friends of both sexes in France.
When Thomas Paine visited that country, after the return of Franklin to
America, he wrote to the latter that he found his friends in France "very
numerous and very affectionate"; and we can readily believe it. Among them
were Buffon, Condorcet, Lafayette, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Lavoisier,
Chastellux, Grand, Dupont, Dubourg and Le Veillard.
To Buffon, the great naturalist, Franklin was drawn by common scientific
sympathies. Like Franklin, he became a sufferer from the stone, and one of
the results was a letter in which the former, in reply to an inquiry from
him as to how he obtained relief from the malady, stated that his remedy
was to take, on going to bed, "the Bigness of a Pigeon's Egg of Jelly of
Blackberries"; which, in the eyes of modern medical science was, as a
palliative, hardly more effective than a bread pill.
With Condorcet, the philosopher, Franklin was intimate enough to call him,
and to be called by him, "My dear and illustrious Confrere"; and it was he,
it is worthy of mention, who happily termed Franklin "the modern
Prometheus."
For Lafayette, that winning figure, forever fixed in the American memory,
despite his visit to America in old age, in immortal youth and freshness,
like the young lover and the happy boughs on Keats's Grecian Urn, Franklin
had a feeling not unlike that of Washington. In referring to the expedition
against England, in which Temple Franklin was to have accompanied
Lafayette, Franklin said in a letter to the latter, "I flatter myself, too,
that he might possibly catch from you some Tincture of those engaging
Manners that make you so much the Delight of all that know you." In another
letter, he observed in reply to the statement by Lafayette that the writer
had had enemies in America, "You are luckier, for I think you have none
here, nor anywhere." When it became his duty to deliver to Lafayette the
figured sword presented to the latter by Congress, he performed the office,
though ill-health compelled him to delegate the actual delivery of the gift
to his grandson, in the apt and pointed language which never failed him
upon such occasions. "By the help," he said, "of the exquisite Artists
France affords, I find it easy to express everything but the Sense we have
of your Worth and our Obligations to you. For this, Figures and even Words
are found insufficient." Through all his letters to Lafayette there is a
continuous suggestion of cordial attachment to both him and his wife. When
Lafayette wrote to him that Madame de Lafayette had just given birth to a
daughter, and that he was thinking of naming her Virginia, he replied, "In
naming your Children I think you do well to begin with the most antient
State. And as we cannot have too many of so good a Race I hope you & Mme
de la Fayette will go thro the Thirteen." This letter was written at Passy.
In a later letter to Lafayette, written at Philadelphia, he concluded by
saying, "You will allow an old friend of four-score to say he _loves_ your
wife, when he adds, and children, and prays God to bless them all."
For the Duc de la Rochefoucauld he entertained the highest respect as well
as a cordial feeling of friendship. "The good Duke," he terms him in a
letter to Dr. Price. And it was to the judgment of the Duke and M. le
Veillard in France, as it was to that of Vaughan and Dr. Price in England,
as we shall see, that he left the important question as to whether any of
the _Autobiography_ should be published, and, if so, how much. Among the
many tributes paid to his memory, was a paper on his life and character
read by the Duke before the Society of 1789. One of the Duke's services to
America was that of translating into French, at the request of Franklin,
for European circulation all the constitutions of the American States.
Lavoisier was a member with Franklin of the commission which investigated
the therapeutic value of mesmerism, and exposed the imposture of Mesmer.
There are no social incidents in the intercourse of the two men, friendly
as it was, so far as we know, worthy of mention; but, in a passage in one
of Franklin's letters to Jan Ingenhousz, we have a glimpse of the master,
of whom, when guillotined, after the brutal declaration of Coffinhal, the
President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, that the Republic had no need for
_savants_, Lagrange remarked, "They needed but a moment to lay that head
low, and a hundred years, perhaps, will not be sufficient to reproduce its
like." Speaking of an experiment performed by Lavoisier, Franklin wrote to
Jan Ingenhousz, "He kindled a hollow Charcoal, and blew into it a Stream of
dephlogisticated Air. In this Focus, which is said to be the hottest fire
human Art has yet been able to produce, he melted Platina in a few
Minutes."
Franklin's friend, the Chevalier (afterwards Marquis) de Chastellux, who
served with the Comte de Rochambeau in America, and was the author of the
valuable _Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 81 and 82_, succeeded
in making himself as agreeable to American women as Franklin succeeded in
making himself to French women. There is an echo of this popularity in one
of Franklin's letters to him. "Dare I confess to you," he said, when he was
still at Passy, and the Chevalier was still in America, "that I am your
rival with Madame G----? (Franklin's Katy). I need not tell you, that I am
not a dangerous one. I perceive that she loves you very much; and so does,
dear Sir, yours, &c."
Through the influence of Leray de Chaumont, Ferdinand Grand, who was a
Swiss Protestant, became the banker of our representatives in France, and,
after Franklin's return to America, he remained entrusted with some of
Franklin's private funds upon which the latter was in the habit of drawing
from time to time. The correspondence between Franklin and himself is
almost wholly lacking in social interest, but it indicates a deep feeling
of affection upon Franklin's part.
For Dupont de Nemours, the distinguished economist, and the founder of the
family, which has been so conspicuous in the industrial, military and naval
history of the United States, Franklin cherished a feeling distinctly
friendly. His acquaintance with Dupont as well as with Dubourg, who, like
Dupont, was a member of the group of French Economists, known as the
Physiocrats, was formed, as we have seen, before his mission to France. The
correspondence between Franklin and Dupont, however, like that between
Franklin and Grand, has but little significance for the purposes of this
chapter.[40]
This, however, is not true of the relations between Dr. Barbeu Dubourg, a
medical practitioner of high standing, and Franklin. They not only opened
their minds freely to each other upon a considerable variety of topics, but
their intercourse was colored by cordial association. Of all the men who
came under the spell of Franklin's genius, Dubourg, who was, to use
Franklin's own words, "a man of extensive learning," was one of the
American philosopher's most enthusiastic pupils. "My dear Master," was the
term that he habitually used in speaking of him, and his reverence for the
object of his admiration led him to translate into French, with some
additions, the edition of Franklin's scientific papers, brought out in
London by David Henry in 1769. Nothing that he had ever written, he told
his master, had been so well received as the preface to this compilation.
"So great," he declared, "is the advantage of soaring in the shadow of
Franklin's wings." We pass by the communications from Franklin to Dubourg
on purely scientific subjects. One letter from the former to him brings to
our knowledge a curious habit into which Franklin was drawn by the
uncompromising convictions that he entertained in regard to the origin of
bad colds and the virtues of ventilation, of which we shall hereafter speak
more particularly.
You know [he said] the cold bath has long been in vogue
here as a tonic; but the shock of the cold water has
always appeared to me, generally speaking, as too
violent, and I have found it much more agreeable to my
constitution to bathe in another element, I mean cold
air. With this view I rise almost every morning, and
sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an
hour or an hour, according to the season, either
reading or writing. This practice is not in the least
painful, but, on the contrary, agreeable; and, if I
return to bed afterwards, before I dress myself, as
sometimes happens, I make a supplement to my night's
rest of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep
that can be imagined. I find no ill consequences
whatever resulting from it, and that at least it does
not injure my health, if it does not in fact contribute
much to its preservation.
Another letter from Franklin to Dubourg is a dissertation on swimming--the
only form of outdoor exercise, to which he was addicted--but in which he
was, throughout his life, such an adept that he could even make the
following entry in his Journal, when he was at Southampton on his return to
America from France: "I went at noon to bathe in Martin's salt-water
hot-bath, and, floating on my back, fell asleep, and slept near an hour by
my watch without sinking or turning! a thing I never did before, and should
hardly have thought possible. Water is the easiest bed that can be!" In the
letter to Dubourg, he recalls the assertion of a M. Robinson that fat
persons with small bones float most easily upon the water, makes a passing
reference to the diving bell and the swimming waist-coat, now known as the
life-preserver, and suggests the comfort of varying the progressive motion
of swimming by turning over occasionally upon one's back, and otherwise. He
also states that the best method of allaying cramp is to give a sudden
vigorous and violent shock to the affected region; which may be done in the
air as the swimmer swims along on his back, and recalls an incident
illustrative of the danger of throwing one's self, when thoroughly heated,
into cold spring water.
The exercise of swimming [he declared] is one of the
most healthy and agreeable in the world. After having
swam for an hour or two in the evening, one sleeps
coolly the whole night, even during the most ardent
heat of summer. Perhaps, the pores being cleansed, the
insensible perspiration increases and occasions this
coolness. It is certain that much swimming is the means
of stopping a diarrhoea, and even of producing a
constipation.
In this letter, too, Franklin tells Dubourg how, when he was a boy, he
quickened his progress in swimming by aiding the stroke of his hands with
oval palettes, and attempted to do so by attaching a kind of sandals to the
soles of his feet; and also how in his boyhood, on one occasion, he lay on
his back in a pond and let his kite draw him across it without the least
fatigue, and with the greatest pleasure imaginable. He thought it not
impossible to cross in this manner from Dover to Calais.
Another letter from Franklin to Dubourg on what he calls the doctrines of
life and death is a delightful example of both his insatiable
inquisitiveness and the readiness with which he could give a pleasant
fillip to any subject however grave. He is speaking of some common flies
that had been drowned in Madeira wine, apparently about the time when it
was bottled in Virginia to be sent to London, where the writer was:
At the opening of one of the bottles, at the house of a
friend where I then was [he said], three drowned flies
fell into the first glass that was filled. Having heard
it remarked that drowned flies were capable of being
revived by the rays of the sun, I proposed making the
experiment upon these; they were therefore exposed to
the sun upon a sieve, which had been employed to strain
them out of the wine. In less than three hours, two of
them began by degrees to recover life. They commenced
by some convulsive motions of the thighs, and at length
they raised themselves upon their legs, wiped their
eyes with their fore feet, beat and brushed their wings
with their hind feet, and soon after began to fly,
finding themselves in Old England, without knowing how
they came thither. The third continued lifeless till
sunset, when, losing all hopes of him, he was thrown
away.
I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent
a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner
that they may be recalled to life at any period,
however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see
and observe the state of America a hundred years hence,
I should prefer to any ordinary death, the being
immersed in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few friends,
till that time, to be then recalled to life by the
solar warmth of my dear country! But since in all
probability we live in an age too early and too near
the infancy of science, to hope to see such an art
brought in our time to its perfection, I must for the
present content myself with the treat, which you are so
kind as to promise me, of the resurrection of a fowl or
turkey cock.
The friendship of Dubourg for Franklin bore good fruit for America, when
the American Revolution came on; for a sanguine letter from him exerted a
determining influence in inducing Congress to send Franklin to France.
Le Veillard, who was a neighbor of Franklin at Passy, was one of the
friends whom Franklin loved as he loved Hugh Roberts or John Hughes,
Strahan or Jan Ingenhousz. And this feeling, as usual, included the members
of his friend's family. Public cares, he wrote to Le Veillard, after his
return to America, could not make him forget that he and Le Veillard loved
one another. In the same letter, he spoke of Madame Le Veillard, as "the
best of good women," and of her daughter as the amiable daughter, who, he
thought, would tread in her footsteps. In a later letter, he told Le
Veillard that he could not give him a better idea of his present happiness
in his family than by informing him that his daughter had all the virtues
of a certain good lady whom Le Veillard allowed him to love; the same
tender affections and intentions, ingenuity, industry, economy, etc.
"Embrace that good dame for me warmly, and the amiable daughter," he added.
"My best wishes attend the whole family, whom I shall never cease to love
while I am B. Franklin." This wealth of affection was richly repaid. The
closest relations existed between Franklin and the Le Veillard family,
while he was in France, and, when he left that country, Le Veillard was not
content to accompany him simply to the seacoast, but was his companion as
far as Southampton. To him, Abel James, Benjamin Vaughan and the Shipleys
we are beholden for the fact that the _Autobiography_ was brought down to
the year 1757; there to stop like the unfinished tower which tantalized the
world with a haunting sense of its rare worth and incompleteness. Like a
faithful, good wife, who avails herself of her intimacy with her husband to
bring the continuous pressure of her influence to bear upon him for the
purpose of arousing him to a proper sense of his duty, Le Veillard spared
neither entreaty nor reproach to secure additions to the precious sibylline
leaves of the _Autobiography_. "You blame me for writing three pamphlets
and neglecting to write the little history," Franklin complained. "You
should consider they were written at sea, out of my own head; the other
could not so well be written there for want of the documents that could
only be had here." After this bit of self-defense, Franklin goes on to
describe his physical condition. He realized that the stone in his bladder
had grown heavier, he said, but on the whole it did not give him more pain
than when he was at Passy, and, except in standing, walking or making
water, he was very little incommoded by it. Sitting or lying in bed, he was
generally quite easy, God be thanked, and, as he lived temperately, drank
no wine, and used daily the exercise of the dumb-bell, he flattered himself
that the stone was kept from augmenting so much as it might otherwise do,
and that he might still continue to find it tolerable. "People who live
long," the unconquerable devotee of human existence declared, "who will
drink of the cup of life to the very bottom, must expect to meet with some
of the usual dregs."
The view taken by Franklin in this letter of his physical condition was
entirely too cheerful to work any alteration in the resolution of Le
Veillard that the _Autobiography_ should be completed, if the unremitting
appeal of an old friend could prevail. In a subsequent letter, Franklin
tells him that in Philadelphia his time was so cut to pieces by friends and
strangers that he had sometimes envied the prisoners in the Bastile. His
three years of service as President, however, would expire in the
succeeding October, and he had formed the idea of retiring then to Temple's
farm at Rancocas, where he would be free from the interruption of visits,
and could complete the work for Le Veillard's satisfaction. In the
meantime, in view of the little remnant of life left to him, the accidents
that might happen before October, and Le Veillard's earnest desire, he had
resolved to proceed with the _Autobiography_ the very next day, and to go
on with it daily until finished. This, if his health permitted, might be
in the course of the ensuing summer.
In a still later letter, Franklin declared that Le Veillard was a hard
taskmaster to his friend. "You insist," he said, "on his writing _his
life_, already a long work, and at the same time would have him continually
employed in augmenting the subject, while the time shortens in which the
work is to be executed." Some months later, he is able to send to Le
Veillard the joyful intelligence that he had recently made great progress
in the work that his friend so urgently demanded, and that he had come as
far as his fiftieth year. Indeed, he even stated that he expected to have
the work finished in about two months, if illness, or some unforeseen
interruption, did not prevent. This expectation was not realized, and the
reason for it is stated in painful terms in a subsequent letter from
Franklin to Le Veillard.
I have a long time [he said] been afflicted with almost
constant and grevious Pain, to combat which I have been
obliged to have recourse to Opium, which indeed has
afforded me some Ease from time to time, but then it
has taken away my Appetite and so impeded my Digestion
that I am become totally emaciated, and little remains
of me but a Skeleton covered with a Skin. In this
Situation I have not been able to continue my Memoirs,
and now I suppose I shall never finish them. Benjamin
has made a Copy of what is done, for you, which shall
be sent by the first safe Opportunity.
The copy was subsequently sent to Le Veillard, and, after the death of
Franklin, was given by him to William Temple Franklin, to whom Franklin
bequeathed most of his papers, in exchange for the original manuscript of
the _Autobiography_. The motive for the exchange was doubtless the desire
of Temple to secure the most legible "copy" that he could find for the
printer of his edition of his grandfather's works. The original manuscript
finally became the property by purchase of the late John Bigelow. There is
reason to believe that, even after the receipt of the copy of the
_Autobiography_, Le Veillard still cherished the hope that the work might
be brought down to a later date. Writing to Le Veillard only a few days
before Franklin's death, Jefferson said:
I wish I could add to your happiness by giving you a
favourable account of the good old Doctor. I found him
in bed where he remains almost constantly. He had been
clear of pain for some days and was chearful and in
good spirits. He listened with a glow of interest to
the details of your revolution and of his friends which
I gave him. He is much emaciated. I pressed him to
continue the narration of his life and perhaps he will.
That Le Veillard had a lively mind we may well infer from an amusing
paragraph in one of his letters to Franklin in which he pictures the
jealousy with which Madame Helvetius and Madame Brillon regarded each other
after the departure of Franklin from France.
You had two good friends here [he said] who might have
lived harmoniously enough with each other, because they
almost never saw each other, and you assured each of
them privately that it was she that you loved the best;
but do you venture to write to one and keep silent to
the other? The first does not fail to brag and show her
letter everywhere; what do you wish to become of the
other? Two women draw their knives, their friends take
sides, the war becomes general, now see what you have
done. You set fire with a bit of paper to one half of
the world, you who have so effectively aided in
pacifying the other half!
It was a singularly unhappy prophecy that Franklin, after his return to
Philadelphia, made to this friend whose lips were so soon to be dyed with
the red wine of the guillotine. "When this fermentation is over," he wrote
to him with regard to the popular tumults in which France was then
involved, "and the troubling parts subsided, the wine will be fine and
good, and cheer the hearts of those who drink it."
A bright letter from the daughter of Le Veillard merits a passing word. In
reply to the statement of Franklin that she did not embrace him with a good
grace, she says:
You know doubtless a great number of things; you have
travelled much; you know men, but you have never
penetrated the head of a French girl. Well! I will tell
you their secret: When you wish to embrace one and she
says that it does not pain her, that means that it
gives her pleasure.
Very dear, too, to Franklin, was Dr. Jan Ingenhousz, the eminent scientist
and physician to Maria Theresa. Many years after Franklin made his
acquaintance, he received from Franklin the assurance that he had always
loved him ever since he knew him, with uninterrupted affection, and he
himself in a previous letter to Franklin styled him in his imperfect
English "the most respectful" of all his friends. Only a few of the
numerous letters that Franklin must have written to this friend are known
to be in existence, and these are not particularly interesting from a
social point of view. In one respect, however, they strikingly evince the
kindness of heart which made Franklin so lovable. As was true of many other
Europeans of his time, Ingenhousz incurred considerable pecuniary loss in
American business ventures, and, like King David, who in his haste called
all men liars, he was disposed at one time to call all Americans knaves.
One of his American debtors, as we have already stated, was Samuel Wharton,
of Philadelphia.
I know we should be happy together [wrote Franklin to
Ingenhousz when the writer was about to return to
America], and therefore repeat my Proposition that you
should ask Leave of the Emperor to let you come and
live with me during the little Remainder of Life that
is left me. I am confident his Goodness would grant
your Request. You will be at no expence while with me
in America; you will recover your Debt from Wharton,
and you will make me happy.
And the letter concludes with the request that Ingenhousz, who shared his
enthusiasm for electrical experiments, would let him know soon whether he
would make him happy by accepting his invitation. "I have Instruments," he
declared, in terms that remind us of Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, when
they were planning their future military diversions together, "if the Enemy
did not destroy them all, and we will make Plenty of Experiments together."
Such were the more conspicuous of the friendships which clustered so
thickly about the life of Franklin.[41] When we remember that all these
men and women have with him said "good-night" to his Landlord of Life and
Time, and gone off to their still chambers, we experience a feeling
something like that of Xerxes when he gazed upon his vast army and
reflected that not a man in it might return from Greece. The thought that
there might never again be any movement in those cheerless rooms, nor any
glimmer of recurring day was well calculated to make one, who loved his
friends as Franklin did, exclaim, "I too with your Poet trust in God." The
wide sweep of his sympathies and charities, the open prospect ever
maintained by his mind, are in nothing made clearer to us than in the
extent and variety of his friendships. They were sufficiently elastic, as
we have seen, to include many diverse communities, and such extremes as
Joseph Watson and James Ralph, George Whitefield and Lord le Despencer,
John Jay and General Charles Lee, Polly and Madame Brillon. The natural,
instinctive side of his character is brought to our attention very plainly
in a letter from him to David Hartley, which reveals in an engaging manner
the profound effect worked upon his imagination by a poor peasant, but
_veritable philosophe_, who had walked all the way to Paris from one of the
French provinces for the purpose of communicating a purely benevolent
project to the world. But, at the same time, he never found any difficulty
in accommodating himself to aberrant or artificial types of character, or
to alien usages, customs and modes of thought. He belonged to the _genus
homo_ not to the species _homo Americanus_ or _Britannicus_. Like the
politic and much-experienced Ulysses of Tennyson, familiar with
"Cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,"
he could say,
"I am a part of all that I have met."
Wherever he went into the world, he realized his own aspiration that the
time might come when a philosopher could set his foot on any part of the
earth, and say, "This is my Country." Wherever he happened to be, he was
too exempt from local bias, thought thoughts, cherished feelings, and spoke
a language too universal not to make a strong appeal to good will and
friendship.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] In a letter to Count de Moustiers, dated Philadelphia, Feb. 10, 1788,
Franklin termed Louis XVI. and France "the best of Kings & the most beloved
of Nations."
[39] Franklin was too old when he entered upon the French mission to
acquire a real mastery of the French language. On one occasion, when at the
theatre with Madame de Boufflers, from whom he took his cue in helping to
swell the plaudits of the evening, he was chagrined to find that his most
vigorous applause had been bestowed on flattering allusions to himself.
[40] No humanitarian levels were too high for the aspirations of Franklin,
but he always took care, to use one of the sayings that he conceived or
borrowed, not to ride before the horse's head. There is just a suspicion of
unconscious sarcasm in a letter from him to Dupont in which he expresses
the wish that the Physiocratic philosophy may grow and increase till it
becomes the governing philosophy of the human species, "as it must be that
of superior beings in better worlds."
[41] Franklin had many intimate friends besides those mentioned in our
text. In two letters to Samuel Rhoads he refers to his "dear old Friend
Mrs. Paschal." In a letter to Thomas Mifflin, congratulating him upon his
election as President of Congress, he speaks of their "ancient friendship."
William Hunter he addresses in 1786 as "my dear old friend." In a letter to
him in 1782, Thomas Pownall, the former Colonial Governor, says: "Permett
me to say how much I have been your old invariable friend of four or five
and twenty years standing." Jean Holker and his wife, of Rouen, were "dear
friends" of his, and he was on terms of intimacy with John Joseph Monthieu,
a Paris merchant, and Turgot, the French statesman. He writes to Miss
Alexander from Passy that he has been to pay his respects to Madame La
Marck, "not merely," he says, "because it was a Compliment due to her, but
because I love her; which induces me to excuse her not letting me in." One
of Franklin's friends, Dr. Edward Bancroft, a native of Massachusetts, who
kept one foot in London and one foot in Paris during the Revolution, for
the purpose, as was supposed by those of our envoys who were on good terms
with him, of collecting, and imparting to our mission, information about
the plans of the British Ministry, has come to occupy an equivocal position
in the judgment of history. George Bancroft, the American historian, has
set him down as "a double spy," and the view of Bancroft has been followed
by others, including Henri Doniol, in his work on the participation of
France in the establishment of the United States. But it would seem
difficult for anyone to take this view after reading the acute and vigorous
discussion of the subject by Dr. Francis Wharton in the _Diplomatic
Correspondence of the Revolution_. In a letter to David Hartley of Feb. 22,
1779, Franklin pronounced Bancroft a "Gentleman of Character and Honour."