The True Benjamin Franklin

Madame Helvetius, a still more intimate friend, was a very different sort of woman. She was the widow of a literary man of some celebrity, and she and Franklin were always carrying on an absurd sort of flirtation. They hugged and kissed each other in public, and exchanged extravagant notes which were sometimes mock proposals of marriage, although some have supposed them to have been real ones. He wrote a sort of essay addressed to her, in which he imagines himself in the other world, where he meets her husband, and, after the exchange of many clever remarks with him about madame, he discovers that Helvetius is married to his own deceased wife, Mrs. Franklin, who declares herself rather better pleased with him than she had been with the Philadelphia printer.

“Indignant at this refusal of my Eurydice, I immediately resolved to quit those ungrateful shades, and return to this good world again, to behold the sun and you! Here I am: let us avenge ourselves!”

Such sport over deceased wives and husbands would not be in good taste in America or England, but it was correct enough in France. One of his short notes to Madame Helvetius has also been preserved:

“Mr. Franklin never forgets any party at which Madame Helvetius is expected. He even believes that if he were engaged to go to Paradise this morning, he would pray for permission to remain on earth until half-past one, to receive the embrace promised him at the Turgots’.”

Mrs. Adams has left a description of Madame Helvetius which admirers of Franklin have in vain attempted to explain away by saying that all French women were like her, and that she was, after all, a really noble person:

“She entered the room with a careless, jaunty air; upon seeing ladies who were strangers to her, she bawled out, ‘Ah! mon Dieu, where is Franklin? Why did you not tell me there were ladies here?’ You must suppose her speaking all this in French. ‘How I look!’ said she, taking hold of a chemise made of tiffany, which she had on over a blue lute-string, and which looked as much upon the decay as her beauty, for she was once a handsome woman; her hair was frizzled; over it she had a small straw hat, with a dirty gauze half-handkerchief round it, and a bit of dirtier gauze than ever my maids wore was bowed on behind. She had a black gauze scarf thrown over her shoulders. She ran out of the room; when she returned, the Doctor entered at one door, she at the other; upon which she ran forward to him, caught him by the hand, ‘Hélas! Franklin;’ then gave him a double kiss, one upon each cheek, and another upon his forehead. When we went into the room to dine, she was placed between the Doctor and Mr. Adams. She carried on the chief of the conversation at dinner, frequently locking her hand into the Doctor’s, and sometimes spreading her arms upon the backs of both the gentlemen’s chairs, then throwing her arm carelessly upon the Doctor’s neck.

“I should have been greatly astonished at this conduct, if the good Doctor had not told me that in this lady I should see a genuine Frenchwoman, wholly free from affectation or stiffness of behavior, and one of the best women in the world. For this I must take the Doctor’s word; but I should have set her down for a very bad one, although sixty years of age, and a widow. I own I was highly disgusted, and never wish for an acquaintance with any ladies of this cast. After dinner she threw herself upon a settee, where she showed more than her feet. She had a little lap-dog, who was, next to the Doctor, her favorite. This she kissed, and when he wet the floor she wiped it up with her chemise. This is one of the Doctor’s most intimate friends, with whom he dines once every week, and she with him. She is rich, and is my near neighbor; but I have not yet visited her. Thus you see, my dear, that manners differ exceedingly in different countries. I hope, however, to find amongst the French ladies manners more consistent with my ideas of decency, or I shall be a mere recluse.” (Letters of Mrs. John Adams, p. 252.)

It is not likely that Franklin had the respect for Madame Helvetius that he had for Madame Brillon. She was, strange to say, an illiterate woman, as one of her letters to him plainly shows. Some of his letters to her read as if he were purposely feeding her inordinate vanity. He tells her in one that her most striking quality is her artless simplicity; that statesmen, philosophers, and poets flock to her; that he and his friends find in her “sweet society that charming benevolence, that amiable attention to oblige, that disposition to please and to be pleased which we do not always find in the society of one another.” She lived at Auteuil, and he and the Abbé Morellet and others called her “Our Lady of Auteuil.” They boasted much of their love for her, and enjoyed many wonderful conversations on literature and philosophy, and much gayety at her house, which they called “The Academy.”

After Franklin had returned to America the Abbé Morellet, who was an active and able man in his way, wrote him many amusing letters about their lady and her friends.

“I shall never forget the happiness I have enjoyed in knowing you and seeing you intimately. I write to you from Auteuil, seated in your arm chair, on which I have engraved Benjamin Franklin hic sedebat, and having by my side the little bureau, which you bequeathed to me at parting with a drawerful of nails to gratify the love of nailing and hammering, which I possess in common with you. But, believe me, I have no need of all these helps to cherish your endeared remembrance and to love you.

“‘Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos reget artus.’”

One of the cleverest letters Franklin wrote while in France was addressed to an old English friend, Mrs. Thompson, who had called him a rebel. “You are too early, hussy” he says, “as well as too saucy, in calling me rebel; you should wait for the event, which will determine whether it is a rebellion or only a revolution. Here the ladies are more civil; they call us les insurgens, a character that usually pleases them.” He continues chaffing her, and describes himself as wearing his own hair in France, where every one else had on a great powdered wig. If they would only dismiss their friseurs and give him half the money they pay to them, “I could then enlist these friseurs, who are at least one hundred thousand, and with the money I would maintain them, make a visit with them to England, and dress the heads of your ministers and privy councillors, which I conceive at present to be un peu dérangées. Adieu, madcap; and believe me ever, your affectionate friend and humble servant.”

In the large house of M. de Chaumont, which he occupied, he, of course, had his electrical apparatus, and played doctor by giving electricity to paralytic people who were brought to him. On one occasion he made the wrong contact, and fell to the floor senseless. He had, also, a small printing-press with type made in the house by his own servants, and he used it to print the little essays with which he amused his friends.

His friendships in France seem to have been mostly among elderly people. There are only a few traces of his fondness for young girls, and we find none of those pleasant intimacies such as he enjoyed with Miss Ray, Miss Stevenson, or the daughters of the Bishop of St. Asaph. Unmarried women in France were too much restricted to be capable of such friendships even with an elderly man. But among his papers in the collection of the American Philosophical Society there is a letter written by some French girl who evidently had taken a fancy to him and playfully insisted on calling herself his daughter.

“My dear father américain

“god Bess liberty! I drunk with all my heart to the republick of the united provinces. I am prepared to my departure if you will and if it possible. give me I pray you leave to go. I shall be happy of to live under the laws of venerable good man richard. adieu my dear father I am with the most respect and tenderness

“Your humble Servant“and your daughter“J. B. J. Conway“Auxerre 22 M. 1778.”

Besides the dining abroad, which, he tells us, occurred six days out of seven, he gave a dinner at home every Sunday for any Americans that were in Paris; “and I then,” he says, “have my grandson Ben, with some other American children from the school.”

New-Englanders had very economical ideas in those days, and when it was learned that Franklin entertained handsomely in Paris there was a great fuss over it in the Connecticut newspapers.

The fête-champêtre that was given to him by the Countess d’Houdetot must have been a ridiculous and even nauseous dose of adulation to swallow; but he no doubt went through it all without a smile, and it serves to show the extraordinary position that he occupied. He was more famous in France than Voltaire or any Frenchman.

A formal account of the fête was prepared by direction of the countess, and copies circulated in Paris. The victim of it is described as “the venerable sage” who, “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;” and this sentence is as complete a summary as could be made of what Franklin was to the French people.

As soon as he arrived the countess addressed him in verse:

“Soul of the heroes and the wise,Oh, Liberty! first gift of the gods.Alas! at too great a distance do we offer our vows.As lovers we offer homageTo the mortal who has made citizens happy.”

The company walked through the gardens and then sat down to the banquet. At the first glass of wine they rose and sang, —

“Of Benjamin let us celebrate the glory;Let us sing the good he has done to mortals.In America he will have altars;And in Sanoy let us drink to his glory.”

At the second glass the countess sang a similar refrain, at the third glass the viscount sang, and so on for seven glasses, each verse more extraordinary than the others. Virtue herself had assumed the form of Benjamin; he was greater than William Tell; Philadelphia must be such a delightful place; the French would gladly dwell there, although there was neither ball nor play. But Sanoy was Philadelphia as long as dear Benjamin remained there. He was led to the garden to plant a tree, with more singing about the lightning that he had drawn from the sky, and the lightning, of course, would never strike that tree. Finally he was allowed to depart with another song of adulation addressed to him after he was seated in the carriage.

Now that more than a hundred years have passed it is gratifying to our national pride to reflect that a man who was so thoroughly American in his origin and education should have been worshipped in this way by an alien race as no other man, certainly no other American, was ever worshipped by foreigners. But the enjoyment of this stupendous reputation, overshadowing and dwarfing the Adamses, Jays, and all other public men who went to Europe, was marred by some unpleasant consequences. Jealousies were aroused not only among individuals, but to a certain extent among all the American people. It was too much. He had ceased to be one of them. It was rumored that he would never return to America, but would resign and settle down among those strangers who treated him as though he were a god.

It was also inevitable that a worse suspicion should arise. He was too subservient, it was said, to France. He yielded everything to her. He was turning her from an ally into a ruler. He could no longer see her designs; or, if he saw them, he approved of them. This suspicion gained such force that it was the controlling principle with Adams and Jay when they went to Paris to arrange the treaty of peace with England after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in October, 1781. We have seen instances in our own time of our ministers to Great Britain becoming very unpopular at home because they were liked in England, and in Franklin’s case this feeling was vastly greater than anything we have known in recent years, because his popularity in France was prodigious, and he avowedly acted upon the principle that it was best to be complaisant to the French court.

During the winter which followed the surrender of Lord Cornwallis overtures of peace were made by England to Franklin, as representing America, and to Vergennes, as representing France, and they became more earnest in March after the Tory ministry, which had been conducting the war, was driven from power. In April the negotiations with Franklin were well under way, and he continued to conduct them until June, when he was taken sick and incapacitated for three months. After his recovery he took only a minor part in the proceedings, for Jay and Adams had meanwhile arrived.

Congress had appointed Adams, Jay, Franklin, Jefferson, and Laurens commissioners to arrange the treaty, and made Adams head of the commission. When the negotiations began, however, Franklin was the only commissioner at Paris, and necessarily took charge of all the business. Just before he was taken sick Jay arrived, and he and Jay conducted affairs until Adams joined them at the end of October. Laurens, who had been a prisoner in England, did not reach Paris until just before the preliminary treaty was signed, and Jefferson, being detained in America, took no part in the proceedings.

While Franklin was carrying on the negotiations alone, he insisted on most of the terms which were afterwards agreed upon: first of all, independence, and, in addition to that, the right to fish on the Newfoundland Banks and a settlement of boundaries; but he added a point not afterwards pressed by the others, – namely, that Canada should be ceded to the United States. In exchange for Canada he was prepared to allow some compensation to the Tories for their loss of property during the war. Adams and Jay, on taking up the negotiations, dropped Canada entirely and insisted stoutly to the end that there should be no compensation whatever to the Tories.

Franklin’s admirers have always contended that it would have been better if Jay and Adams had kept away altogether, for in that case Franklin would have secured all that they got for us and Canada besides. This, however, is mere supposition, one of those vague ideas of what might have been without any proof to support it. Franklin pressed the cession of Canada, it is true; but there is no evidence that it would have been granted. At that time the people of the United States appear not to have wanted the land of snow, and ever since then the general opinion has been that we have enough to manage already, and are better off without a country vexed with serious political controversies with its French population and the Roman Catholic school question.

On the whole, it would not have been well for Franklin to have continued to conduct the negotiations alone. The situation was difficult, and the united efforts and varied ability of at least three commissioners were required. Neither Franklin nor Jay knew much about the fisheries question, and they might have been forced to yield on this point. But Adams, from his long experience in conducting litigation for the Massachusetts fishing interests, was better prepared on this subject than any other American, and it was generally believed by the public men of that time that the important rights we secured on the Newfoundland Banks were due almost entirely to his skill. He was also more familiar with the boundary question between Maine and New Brunswick, and had brought with him documents from Massachusetts which were invaluable.

While Jay and Franklin were acting together before the arrival of Adams, a serious question arose about the commission of Oswald, the British negotiator who had come over to Paris. He was empowered to treat with the “Colonies or Plantations,” and nowhere in the document was the term United States of America used. Jay refused to treat with a man who held such a commission. Franklin and Vergennes vainly urged that it was a mere form, and that Great Britain had already in several ways acknowledged the independence of the United States. Oswald showed an article of his instructions which authorized him to grant complete independence to the thirteen colonies, and he offered to write a letter declaring that he treated with them as an independent power; but Jay was inflexible, and in this he seems to have been right.

Franklin made a great mistake in not agreeing with him, for in the suspicious state of people’s minds at that time his conduct in this respect was taken as proof positive of his subserviency to the French court. Jay suspected that Vergennes advised accepting Oswald’s commission so as to prevent a clear admission of independence, and thus keep the United States embroiled with England as long as possible. In order to support his opposition to Jay, Franklin was obliged to talk about his confidence in the French court, its past generosity and friendliness, and also to call attention to the instruction of Congress that the commissioners should do nothing without the knowledge of the French government, and in all final decisions be guided by that government’s advice.

This instruction had been passed by Congress after much debate and hesitation, and was finally carried, it is said, through the influence of the French minister. Its adoption was a mistake; without it the commissioners would probably of their own accord have sought the advice of Vergennes; but a positive order to do so put them in an undignified and humiliating position. Franklin had been so long intimate with Vergennes and was so accustomed to consulting him that the instruction was superfluous as to him. His reputation was so great in France and his tact so perfect that he was in no danger of feeling overshadowed or subdued by such consultations; but Jay and Adams so thoroughly detested the instruction that they had made up their minds to disregard it altogether.

“Would you break your instruction?” said Franklin.

“Yes,” said Jay, “as I break this pipe,” and he threw the pieces into the fire.

Jay’s firmness compelled Oswald to obtain a new commission in the proper form, and while he deserves credit for this and also for his principle, “We must be honest and grateful to our allies, but think for ourselves,” he seems in the light of later evidence to have been mistaken in his deep mistrust of the French court. His opinions have been briefly stated by Adams:

“Mr. Jay likes Frenchmen as little as Mr. Lee and Mr. Izard did. He says they are not a moral people; they know not what it is; he don’t like any Frenchman; the Marquis de Lafayette is clever, but he is a Frenchman. Our allies don’t play fair, he told me; they were endeavoring to deprive us of the fishery, the western lands, and the navigation of the Mississippi; they would even bargain with the English to deprive us of them; they want to play the western lands, Mississippi, and whole Gulf of Mexico into the hands of Spain.” (Adams’s Works, vol. iii. p. 303.)

Jay had had a very bitter experience in Spain, where the cold haughtiness and chicanery of the court had made him feel that he was among enemies. The instructions sent to him by Congress had been intercepted, and instead of receiving them as secret orders from his government, they had been handed to him by the Spanish prime-minister after that official had read them. He was accordingly prepared to think that the French government was no better.

In a certain sense there were grounds for his suspicion of France. She was interested in the fisheries on the Banks of Newfoundland, and would naturally like to have a share in them. It was also obviously her policy to prevent the United States and England from becoming too friendly and from making too firm a peace, for fear that they might unite at some future time against her. If she could get them to make a sort of half peace with a number of subjects left unsettled, about which there would be difficulties for many years, it would be a great advantage to her.

Spain wanted to secure the control of the Gulf of Mexico, the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi, and the possession of the lands west of that river, and France, as her ally, might be expected to assist her to obtain these concessions. Arguments and suggestions favoring all these projects were unquestionably used by Frenchmen at that time, and no doubt Vergennes and other public men often had them in mind. It was their duty at least to consider them. But there is no evidence that they actively promoted these schemes or acted in any other than an honorable manner towards us.

As a matter of fact, our commercial relations with England were left unsettled. England claimed, among other things, the right to search our ships, and there was great discontent over this for a long time, amply sufficient to keep us from friendship with England until the question was finally settled by the war of 1812. Adams seems to imply that he could have settled this and other difficulties in 1780 by the commercial treaty which he was empowered to make with England, and that Vergennes, in advising him not to communicate with England, had intended to keep England and the United States embroiled. Possibly that may have been Vergennes’s intention. But as it was afterwards found impossible to adjust these commercial difficulties until the war of 1812, and as Adams himself did not attempt it, though he might have done so in spite of Vergennes’s advice, and as they were finally settled only by a war, it is not probable that Adams could have adjusted them in the easy, offhand way he imagines. In any event, it was not worth while for the sake of these future contingencies to offend Vergennes and jeopardize our alliance and the loans of money we were obtaining from France.

Franklin’s policy of making absolutely sure of the friendship and assistance of France seems to have been the sound one, and with his wonderful accomplishments and adaptability he could be friendly and agreeable without sacrificing anything. But Adams went at everything with a club, and could understand no other method.

I cannot find that Franklin was at any time willing to sacrifice the fisheries, or the Mississippi River or the western lands. In fact, he was more firm on the question of the Mississippi than Congress. In its extremity, Congress finally instructed Jay to yield the navigation of the Mississippi if he could get assistance from Spain in no other way; and the Spanish premier, having intercepted this instruction and read it, had poor Jay at his mercy. But Franklin was very strenuous on this point, and wrote to Jay, —

“Poor as we are, yet, as I know we shall be rich, I would rather agree with them to buy at a great price the whole of their right on the Mississippi, than sell a drop of its waters. A neighbor might as well ask me to sell my street door.”

Jay grew more and more suspicious of France, and Adams reports him as saying, “Every day produces some fresh proof and example of their vile schemes.” One of the British negotiators obtained for him a letter which Marbois, the secretary of the French legation in America, had written home, urging Vergennes not to support the commissioners in their claim to the right of fishing on the Newfoundland Banks. This he considered absolute proof; but the examination which has since been made of all the confidential correspondence of that period does not show that Marbois’s suggestion was ever acted upon. Individuals doubtless cherished purposes of their own, but the French government in all its actions seems to have fully justified Franklin’s confidence in it. Jefferson, who afterwards went to France, declared that there was no proof whatever of Franklin’s subserviency.

When Adams arrived he was delighted to find himself in full accord with Jay. He had been in Holland, where he had succeeded in negotiating a loan and a commercial treaty, and consequently felt that he was somewhat of a success as a diplomatist, and need not any longer be so much overawed by Franklin. He relates in his diary how the French courtiers heaped compliments on him. “Sir,” they would say, “you have been the Washington of the negotiation.” To which he would answer in his best French, “Sir, you have given me the grandest honor and a compliment the most sublime.” They would reply, “Ah, sir, in truth you have well deserved it.” And he concludes by saying, “A few of these compliments would kill Franklin, if they should come to his ears.”

He uses strong language about the “base system” pursued by Franklin, and talks in a lofty way of the impossibility of a man becoming distinguished as a diplomatist who allows his passion for women to get the better of him. He and Jay conducted the rest of the negotiations and completed the treaty, Franklin merely assisting; and Adams gloried in breaking the instruction of Congress to take the advice of France. He was still smarting under the rebuke administered for his interference and for the offence he gave Vergennes a year or two before, and after declaring that Congress in this rebuke had prostituted its own honor as well as his, he breaks forth on the subject of the instruction to take the advice of France: