Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2)

He may keep his Store [he said] in your little North Room for the present. And as he will be at no expence while the Family continues with you, I think he may, with Industry and Frugality, get so forward, as at the end of his Term, to pay his Debts and be clear of the World, which I much wish to see. I have given him £200 Sterl'g to add something to his Cargo.

It is not long before he is writing to Deborah about "Sister Bache and her amiable Daughters." Like the commerce of material gifts, which his wife and himself kept up with each other, when separated, are the details about his godson, William Hewson, the son of his friend Polly, which he exchanges with Deborah for details about his grandson, who came to be known, it seems, as "the Little King Bird," and the "Young Hercules."

In Return for your History of your Grandson [he wrote to her on one occasion], I must give you a little of the History of my Godson. He is now 21 Months old, very strong and healthy, begins to speak a little, and even to sing. He was with us a few Days last Week, grew fond of me, and would not be contented to sit down to Breakfast without coming to call Pa, rejoicing when he had got me into my Place. When seeing me one Day crack one of the Philada Biscuits into my Tea with the Nut-crackers, he took another and try'd to do the same with the Tea-Tongs. It makes me long to be at home to play with Ben.

Indeed, by this time, Franklin had become such a fatuous grandfather that he ceases to call his grandson Ben and speaks of him as "Benny Boy" when he does not speak of him as "the dear boy."

In the fulness of time, Richard and Sally Bache were destined to be the parents of numerous children. When Franklin returned from his mission to France, the youngest of them soon became as devoted to him as had been Billy Hewson, or the youthful son of John Jay, whose singular attachment to him is referred to in one of his letters to Jay. In the same description, in which Manasseh Cutler speaks in such sour terms of the person of Mrs. Bache, he tells us that, when he saw her at Franklin's home in Philadelphia, she had three of her children about her, over whom she seemed to have no kind of command, but who appeared to be excessively fond of their grandpapa. Indeed, all children who were brought into close companionship with Franklin loved him, and instinctively turned to him for responsive love and sympathy. Men may be the best judges of the human intellect, but children are the best judges of the human heart.

Francis Folger, the only legitimate child of Franklin except Sally, is not mentioned in his correspondence with his wife. The colorless Franky who is was not this child. Franklin's son was born a year after the marriage of Franklin and Deborah in 1730, and died, when a little more than four years of age, and therefore long before the date of the earliest letter extant from Franklin to Deborah. Though warned but a few years previously by an epidemic of smallpox in Philadelphia, which had been accompanied by a high rate of mortality, Franklin could not make up his mind to subject the child to the hazards of inoculation. The consequence was that, when a second epidemic visited the city, Francis contracted the disease, and died. Franklin, to use his own words to his sister Jane Mecom, long regretted him bitterly, and also regretted that he had not given him the disease by inoculation.

All, who have seen my grandson [he said in another letter to his sister] agree with you in their accounts of his being an uncommonly fine boy, which brings often afresh to my mind the idea of my son Franky, though now dead thirty-six years, whom I have seldom since seen equaled in every thing, and whom to this day I cannot think of without a sigh.

But Sally and his grandson were far from being the only persons who furnished material for Franklin's letters to his wife. These letters also bring before us in many ways other persons connected with him and Deborah by ties of blood, service or friendship. He repeatedly sends his "duty" to his mother-in-law, Mrs. Read, and when he is informed of the death of "our good mother," as he calls her, he observes, "'Tis, I am sure, a Satisfaction to me, that I cannot charge myself with having ever fail'd in one Instance of Duty and Respect to her during the many Years that she call'd me Son." "My love to Brother John Read and Sister, and cousin Debbey, and young cousin Johnny Read, and let them all know, that I sympathize with them all affectionately," was his message to her relations in the same letter.

Some of his letters conveyed much agreeable information to Deborah about his and her English relations. Of these we shall have something to say in another connection.

"Billy," William Franklin, is mentioned in his father's letters to Deborah on many other occasions than those already cited by us; for he was his father's intimate companion during the whole of the first mission to England. He appears to have truly loved his sister, Sally, and is often mentioned in Franklin's letters to Deborah as sending Sally his love or timely gifts. If he really presented his duty to his mother half as often as Franklin reported, she had no cause to complain of his lack of attention. That her earlier feelings about him had undergone a decided change, before he went to England with his father, we may infer from one of Franklin's letters in which, in response to her "particular inquiry," he tells her that "Billy is of the Middle Temple, and will be call'd to the Bar either this Term or the next." Some seven years later, he tells her that it gave him pleasure to hear from Major Small that he had left her and Sally and "our other children" well also.

Mention of Peter, his negro servant, is also several times made in Franklin's letters to Deborah. In one letter, written when he was convalescing after a severe attack of illness, he tells Deborah that not only had his good doctor, Doctor Fothergill, attended him very carefully and affectionately, and Mrs. Stevenson nursed him kindly, but that Billy was of great service to him, and Peter very diligent and attentive. But a later letter does not give quite so favorable a view of Peter, after the latter had inhaled a little longer the free air of England.

Peter continues with me [said Franklin] and behaves as well as I can expect, in a Country where they are many Occasions of spoiling servants, if they are ever so good. He has a few Faults as most of them, and I see with only one Eye, and hear only with one Ear; so we rub on pretty comfortably.

These words smack of the uxorious policy recommended to husbands by Poor Richard. The same letter gives us a glimpse of another negro servant, who was even more strongly disposed than Peter to act upon the statement in Cowper's Task that slaves cannot breathe in England.

King, that you enquire after [says Franklin], is not with us. He ran away from our House, near two Years ago, while we were absent in the Country; But was soon found in Suffolk, where he had been taken in the Service of a Lady, that was very fond of the Merit of making him a Christian, and contributing to his Education and Improvement. As he was of little Use, and often in Mischief, Billy consented to her keeping him while we stay in England. So the Lady sent him to School, has taught him to read and write, to play on the Violin and French Horn, with some other Accomplishments more useful in a Servant. Whether she will finally be willing to part with him, or persuade Billy to sell him to her, I know not. In the meantime he is no Expence to us.

And that was certainly something worth noting about a servant who could play upon the French horn.

But it is of Goody Smith, the servant in the Franklin household at Philadelphia, whose judgment was invoked upon the failure of Deborah to answer her husband's letter from Easton, that mention is most often made in the portions of Franklin's letters to his wife which relate to servants. In a letter to Deborah from Easton, he expresses his obligations to Goody Smith for remembering him and sends his love to her. In another letter to Deborah, when he was on his way to Williamsburg in Virginia, he says, "my Duty to Mother, and love to Sally, Debby, Gracey, &c., not forgetting the Goodey." Subsequently, when in England, he tells Deborah:

I have order'd two large print Common Prayer Books to be bound on purpose for you and Goodey Smith; and that the largeness of the Print may not make them too bulkey, the Christnings, Matrimonies, and everything else that you and she have not immediate and constant Occasion for, are to be omitted. So you will both of you be repriev'd from the Use of Spectacles in Church a little longer.

In another letter from England, Franklin mentions that he sends Deborah a pair of garters knit by Polly Stevenson who had also favored him with a pair. "Goody Smith may, if she pleases," he adds, "make such for me hereafter, and they will suit her own fat Knees. My Love to her." And love to her he sends again when he hears that she is recovering from an illness. Franklin likewise refers several times in his letters to Deborah to another servant, John, who accompanied him on his return to England in 1764, but the behavior of this servant seems to have been too unexceptionable for him to be a conspicuous figure in his master's letters. They were evidently a kind master and mistress, Franklin and Deborah. "I am sorry for the death of your black boy," he wrote to her on one occasion from London, "as you seem to have had a regard for him. You must have suffered a good deal in the fatigue of nursing him in such a distemper."

Over and over again in his letters to Deborah, Franklin approves himself a "lover of his friends" like his friend Robert Grace. He sends his love to them individually, and he sends his love to them collectively. Even during a brief absence, as when he was off on his military expedition, his letters to Deborah are sprinkled with such messages as "our Compliments to Mrs. Masters and all enquiring Friends," "My Love to Mr. Hall" (his business partner), "Give my hearty Love to all Friends," "Love to all our friends and neighbours." During another brief absence in Virginia, he sends his respects to "Mrs. Masters and all the Officers and in short to all Philadelphia." In a later letter to Deborah, written from Utrecht, the form of his concluding words on the previous occasion is made still more comprehensive. "My Love," he said, "to my dear Sally, and affectionate Regards to all Pennsylvania." In one of his letters from England, he wrote, "Pray remember me kindly to all that love us, and to all that we love. 'Tis endless to name names," and on still another occasion, in asking Deborah to thank all his friends for their favors, which contributed so much to the comfort of his voyage, he added, "I have not time to name Names: You know whom I love and honour." He had such troops of friends that he might well shrink from the weariness of naming them all. Indeed, he scarcely writes a letter to Deborah that does not bear witness to the extent and warmth of his friendships. When he left Philadelphia for England in 1757, about a dozen of his friends accompanied him as far as Trenton, but, in the letter to Deborah which informs us of this fact, he does not give us the names of any of them. This letter was written from Trenton. Mrs. Grace and "Dear Precious Mrs. Shewell," Mrs. Masters, "Mrs. Galloway & Miss," Mrs. Redman, Mrs. Graeme, Mrs. Thomson, Mrs. Story, Mrs. Bartram, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Hilborne all come in at one time, as well as other ladies whom he does not name, for his best respects, in return for friendly wishes that they had transmitted to him through Deborah. In another letter he sends his love to "our dear precious Polly Hunt and all our kind inquiring friends." Friends escorted him to Trenton when he was on his way to England in 1757, friends bestowed all sorts of gifts on him to render his voyage comfortable, Mr. Thomas Wharton even lending him a woollen gown which he found a comfortable companion in his winter passage; friends did him the honor to drink his health in the unfinished kitchen of the new house built in his absence; and friends "honored" the dining-room in this home "with their Company." When he heard of the convivial gathering in the unfinished kitchen, he wrote to Deborah, "I hope soon to drink with them in the Parlour," but there is a tinge of dissatisfaction in his observations to Deborah on the gathering in the dining-room.

It gives me Pleasure [he said] that so many of my Friends honour'd our new Dining Room with their Company. You tell me only of a Fault they found with the House, that it was too little, and not a Word of anything they lik'd in it: Nor how the Kitchen Chimneys perform; so I suppose you spare me some Mortification, which [he adds with a slight inflection of sarcasm] is kind.

His dear friend, Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Wharton, Mr. Roberts, Mr. and Mrs. Duffield, Neighbor Thomson, Dr. and Mrs. Redman, Mrs. Hopkinson, Mr. Duché, Dr. Morgan and Mr. Hopkinson are other friends mentioned in a later letter of his to Deborah. In the same letter, he rejoices that his "good old Friend, Mr. Coleman, is got safe home, and continues well." Coleman, as we shall see, was one of the two friends who had come to his aid in his early manhood when he was sued and threatened with ruin by his creditors. The death of the dear, amiable Miss Ross, "our Friend Bond's heavy loss," the disorder that had befallen "our friend Kinnersley" and other kindred facts awaken his ready sympathy; presents of books, seeds and the like, as well as messages of love and respect, remind his friends how freshly green his memory of them is.

The letters have much to say, too, about the presents to Deborah and Sally which were almost incessantly crossing the outflowing currents of apples and buckwheat meal from Philadelphia. These presents are far too numerous to be all specified by us, but some perhaps it may not be amiss to recall. In one letter, he writes to Deborah that he is sending her a large case marked D. F. No. 1 and a small box marked D. F. No. 2, and that in the large case is another small box containing some English china, viz.: melons and leaves for a dessert of fruit and cream, or the like; a bowl remarkable for the neatness of the figures, made at Bow near London, some coffee cups of the same make, and a Worcester bowl, ordinary. In the same box, to show the difference of workmanship, he said, there was something from all the china works in England and one old true china basin mended of an odd color, four silver salt ladles, newest but ugliest fashion, a little instrument to core apples, another to make little turnips out of great ones and six coarse diaper breakfast cloths. The latter, he stated, were to be spread on the tea table, for nobody breakfasted in London on the naked table but on the cloth set a large tea board with the cups. In the large case were likewise some carpeting for a best room floor, and bordering to go along with it, also two large fine Flanders bed-ticks, two pair of large superfine fine blankets, two fine damask table-cloths and napkins, and forty-three ells of Ghentish sheeting Holland, all of which Deborah had ordered of him; also fifty-six yards of cotton, printed curiously from copper plates, a new invention, to make bed and window curtains, and seven yards of chair bottoms printed in the same way very neat. "These were my Fancy," Franklin remarks, "but Mrs. Stevenson tells me I did wrong not to buy both of the same Colour." In the large case, too, were seven yards of printed cotton, blue ground, to make Deborah a gown.

I bought it by Candlelight, and lik'd it then [the letter said], but not so well afterwards. If you do not fancy it, send it as a Present from me to sister Jenny. There is a better Gown for you, of flower'd Tissue, 16 yards, of Mrs. Stevenson's Fancy, cost 9 Guineas; and I think it a great Beauty. There was no more of the Sort, or you should have had enough for a Negligee or Suit.

There is also Snuffers, Snuff Stand, and Extinguisher of Steel, which I send for the Beauty of the Work. The Extinguisher is for Spermaceti Candles only, and is of a new Contrivance, to preserve the Snuff upon the Candle.

Small box No. 2 contained cut table glass of several sorts. After stating its contents, Franklin adds, "I am about buying a compleat Set of Table China, 2 Cases of silver handled Knives and Forks, and 2 pair Silver Candlesticks; but these shall keep to use here till my Return, as I am obliged sometimes to entertain polite Company."

But there is nothing in this letter equal in interest to the paragraph that brings to our mental eye the handsome, buxom figure of Deborah herself.

I forgot to mention another of my Fancyings, viz.: a Pair of Silk Blankets, very fine. They are of a new kind, were just taken in a French Prize, and such were never seen in England before: they are called Blankets, but I think will be very neat to cover a Summer Bed, instead of a Quilt or Counterpain. I had no Choice, so you will excuse the Soil on some of the Folds; your Neighbour Forster can get it off. I also forgot, among the China, to mention a large fine Jugg for Beer, to stand in the Cooler. I fell in Love with it at first Sight; for I thought it look'd like a fat jolly Dame, clean and tidy, with a neat blue and white Calico Gown on, good natur'd and lovely, and put me, in mind of – Somebody. It has the Coffee Cups in its Belly,21 pack'd in best Chrystal Salt, of a peculiar nice Flavour, for the Table, not to be powder'd.

The receipt of such a case and box as these was doubtless an event long remembered in the Franklin home at Philadelphia. In a subsequent letter from Franklin to Deborah, the following gifts to Sally are brought to our attention:

By Capt. Lutwidge I sent my dear Girl a newest fashion'd white Hat and Cloak, and sundry little things, which I hope will get safe to hand. I now send her a pair of Buckles, made of French Paste Stones, which are next in Lustre to Diamonds. They cost three Guineas, and are said to be cheap at that Price.

These were but a few of the many gifts that Deborah and Sally received from Franklin, when he was in London. In their relations to their own households, philosophers are frequently not unlike the ancient one, who, when told by a messenger that his house was on fire, looked up for a minute from his task to say impatiently that his wife attended to all his domestic affairs. This is not true of Franklin, who was wholly free from the crass ignorance and maladroit touch which render many husbands as much out of place in their own houses as the officious ass in Æsop's fable was in his master's dining-hall. Even the fences, the well and the vegetable garden at times are mentioned in his letters to Deborah, and his mechanical skill stood him in good stead as a householder. He knew how the carpets should be laid down, what stuff should be purchased for curtains in the blue chamber, and by what kind of hooks they should be fastened to the curtain rails, and the number of curtains at each window that the London fashions required. In one letter he gives Deborah minute instructions as to how the blue room in his Philadelphia home was to be painted and papered. In a subsequent letter, after saying that he was glad to hear that certain pictures were safe arrived at Philadelphia, he adds, "You do not tell me who mounted the great one, nor where you have hung it up."

In his relations to his home, at any rate, we can discern nothing of the lack of order, with which he was so frank in reproaching himself. During the time that he was detained in New York by Lord Loudon, he several times had occasion to send a message to his wife about something that he had left behind in his house at Philadelphia, or in his house at Woodbridge in New Jersey, and nothing could be more exact than his recollection as to just where each thing was. He writes for his best spectacles; he had left them on the table, he said, meaning at Woodbridge. In the right hand little drawer under his desk in Philadelphia was some of the Indian Lady's gut-cambric; it was to be rolled up like a ribbon, wrapt in paper and placed in the Indian seal skin hussiff, with the other things already in it, and the hussiff was to be forwarded to him. It would be an acceptable present to a gimcrack great man in London that was his friend. In certain places on his book-shelves at Woodbridge, which he precisely locates, were the Gardener's Dictionary, by P. Miller, and the Treatise on Cydermaking. They were to be delivered to Mr. Parker.

Occasional shadows, of course, fall across the happy and honored life reflected in Franklin's letters to Deborah. We cannot have the evening, however soft and still, without its fading light; or, as Franklin himself put it in one of these letters, "we are not to expect it will be always Sunshine." Strenuous and absorbing as were his public tasks during each of his missions to England; signalized as the latter were by the honors conferred on him by ancient seats of learning, and the attentions paid him by illustrious men; charming and refreshing as were his excursions for health and recreation about the British Islands and on the Continent, and his hours of social relaxation in the country houses of England, Scotland and Ireland; supplied as he was at No. 7 Craven Street with every domestic comfort that the assiduous management of Mrs. Stevenson – who even took care that his shirts should be well-aired as Deborah directed – could provide, his thoughts, now and then, as we have seen, tristfully reverted to his home on the other side of the Atlantic. Some six months after his arrival in England in 1757, he expressed the hope that, if he stayed another winter, it would be more agreeable than the greatest part of the time that he had spent in England. Some two months after his return to England in 1764, he writes to Deborah that he hopes that a few months – the few months slid into ten years – will finish affairs in England to his wish, and bring him to that retirement and repose, with his little family, so suitable to his years, and which he has so long set his heart upon. Some four years later, he wrote to Deborah:

I feel stronger and more active. Yet I would not have you think that I fancy I shall grow young again. I know that men of my Bulk often fail suddenly: I know that according to the Course of Nature I cannot at most continue much longer, and that the living even of another Day is uncertain. I therefore now form no Schemes, but such as are of immediate Execution; indulging myself in no future Prospect except one, that of returning to Philadelphia, there to spend the Evening of Life with my Friends and Family.

There was a time when he loved England and would perhaps have contentedly lived and died there, if his Lares and Penates could have been enticed into taking up their abode there. With his broad, tolerant, jocund nature, he was, it must be confessed, not a little like a hare, which soon makes a form for itself wherever it happens to crouch. The homesickness, which colors a few of his letters, is to no little extent the legacy of illness. But much as he was absent from home, alchemist as he always was in transmuting all that is disagreeable in life into what is agreeable, or at least endurable, the family hearthside never ceased to have a bright, cheerful glow for his well-ordered, home-loving nature.

Grave illness was more than once his lot during his mission to England.22 Shortly after his arrival in that country in 1757, he was seized with a violent attack of sickness, accompanied by delirium, which left him in an invalid condition for quite a time. From the account that he gives of the cupping, vomiting and purging that he underwent, under the care of good Doctor Fothergill, there would seem to have been no lack of opportunity for the escape of the disease, which, judging by the amount of bark that he took in substance and infusion, was probably some form of malarial fever. This attack gives a decidedly valetudinary tone to one of his subsequent letters to Deborah. "I am much more tender than I us'd to be," he said, "and sleep in a short Callico Bedgown with close Sleeves, and Flannel close-footed Trousers; for without them I get no warmth all Night. So it seems I grow older apace." Deborah's health, too, about this time was not overgood, for, a few months later, he writes to her: "It gives me Concern to receive such frequent Accts of your being indisposed; but we both of us grow in Years, and must expect our Constitutions, though tolerably good in themselves, will by degrees give way to the Infirmities of Age." Shortly after Franklin's arrival in England in 1764, he was seized with another attack of illness, but he was soon able to declare that, thanks to God, he was got perfectly well, his cough being quite gone, and his arms mending, so that he could dress and undress himself, if he chose to endure a little pain. A few months later, he says it rejoices him to learn that Deborah is freer than she used to be from the headache and the pain in her side. He himself, he said, was likewise in perfect health. Again he writes to Deborah in the succeeding year: "I congratulate you on the soon expected Repeal of the Stamp Act; and on the great Share of Health we both enjoy, tho' now going in Four-score (that is, in the fourth score)." He was not allowed, however, to indulge long the spirit of congratulation, for, a few months later, one of his letters to Deborah brings to our knowledge the fact that he had been very ill. After his recovery from this illness, he does not seem to have been attacked by anything again while in England, beyond a fit or so of the gout, and in 1768 he readily assents to the statement of Deborah that they were both blessed with a great share of health considering their years, then sixty-three. A few years more, however, and Franklin's correspondence indicates plainly enough that this statement was no longer applicable to Deborah. In the letter last-mentioned, her husband writes to her that he wonders to hear that his friends were backward in bringing her his letters when they arrived, and thinks it must be a mere imagination of hers, the effect of some melancholy humor she happened then to be in; and some four years afterwards he recommends to her a dietary for the preservation of her health and the improvement of her spirits. But both were then beyond repair, and, two years later, she was in the Elysian fields where, despite what was reported, as we shall see, by Franklin to Madame Helvétius about his Eurydice and M. Helvétius, it is impossible to believe that she, faithful, loving creature that she was, did anything but inconsolably await his coming.