The True Benjamin Franklin

The nearest approach to a discovery has, however, been made by Mr. Paul Leicester Ford, in his essay entitled “Who was the Mother of Franklin’s Son?” He found an old pamphlet written during Franklin’s very heated controversy with the proprietary party in Pennsylvania when the attempt was made to abolish the proprietorship of the Penn family and make the colony a royal province. The pamphlet, entitled “What is Sauce for a Goose is also Sauce for a Gander,” after some general abuse of Franklin, says that the mother of his son was a woman named Barbara, who worked in his house as a servant for ten pounds a year; that he kept her in that position until her death, when he stole her to the grave in silence without a pall, tomb, or monument. This is, of course, a partisan statement only, and reiterates what was probably the current gossip of the time among Franklin’s political opponents.

There have also been speculations in Philadelphia as to who was the mother of Franklin’s daughter, the wife of John Foxcroft; but they are mere guesses unsupported by evidence.

From what Franklin has told us of the advice given him when a young man by a Quaker friend, he was at that time exceedingly proud, and also occasionally overbearing and insolent, and this is confirmed by various passages in his early life. But in after-years he seems to have completely conquered these faults. He complains, however, that he never could acquire the virtue of order in his business, having a place for everything and everything in its place. This failing seems to have followed him to the end of his life, and was one of the serious complaints made against him when he was ambassador to France.

But he believed himself immensely benefited by his moral code and his method of drilling himself in it.

“It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor owed the constant felicity of his life, down to his 79th year in which this is written… To Temperance he ascribes his long continued health, and what is still left to him of a good constitution; to Industry and Frugality, the early easiness of his circumstances and acquisition of his fortune, with all that knowledge that enabled him to be a useful citizen, and obtained for him some degree of reputation among the learned; to Sincerity and Justice, the confidence of his country, and the honorable employs it conferred upon him; and to the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues, even in the imperfect state he was able to acquire then, all that evenness of temper and that cheerfulness in conversation, which makes his company still sought for and agreeable even to his younger acquaintances.”

At the same time that he was trying to put into practice his moral code, he conceived the idea of writing a book called “The Art of Virtue,” in which he was to make comments on all the virtues, and show how each could be acquired. Most treatises of this sort, he had observed, were mere exhortations to be good; but “The Art of Virtue” would point out the means. He collected notes and hints for this volume during many years, intending that it should be the most important work of his life; “a great and extensive project,” he calls it, into which he would throw the whole force of his being, and he expected great results from it. He looked forward to the time when he could drop everything else and devote himself to this mighty project, and he received grandiloquent letters of encouragement from eminent men. His vast experience of life would have made it a fascinating volume, and it is to be regretted that public employments continually called him to other tasks.

A young man such as he was is not infrequently able to improve his morals more effectually by marrying than by writing liturgies and codes. He decided to marry about two years after he had begun to discipline himself in his creed and moral precepts. The step seems to have been first suggested to him by Mrs. Godfrey, to whom, with her husband, he rented part of his house and shop. She had a relative who, she thought, would make a good match for him, and she took opportunities of bringing them often together. The girl was deserving, and Franklin began to court her. But he has described the affair so well himself that it would be useless to try to abbreviate it.

“The old folks encouraged me by continual invitations to supper, and by leaving us together, till at length it was time to explain. Mrs. Godfrey managed our little treaty. I let her know that I expected as much money with their daughter as would pay off my remaining debt for the printing-house, which I believe was not then above a hundred pounds. She brought me word they had no such sum to spare; I said they might mortgage their house in the loan office. The answer to this, after some days, was, that they did not approve the match; that, on inquiry of Bradford, they had been informed the printing business was not a profitable one; the types would soon be worn out, and more wanted; that S. Keimer and D. Harry had failed one after the other, and I should probably soon follow them; and, therefore, I was forbidden the house and the daughter shut up.”

This the young printer thought was a mere artifice, the parents thinking that the pair were too fond of each other to separate, and that they would steal a marriage, in which event the parents could give or withhold what they pleased. He resented this attempt to force his hand, dropped the whole matter, and as a consequence quarrelled with Mrs. Godfrey, who with her husband and children left his house.

The passage which follows in Franklin’s Autobiography implies that his utter inability at this period to restrain his passions directed his thoughts more seriously than ever to marriage, and he was determined to have a wife. It may be well here to comment again on his remarkable frankness. There have been distinguished men, like Rousseau, who were at times morbidly frank. Their frankness, however, usually took the form of a confession which did not add to their dignity. But Franklin never confessed anything; he told it. His dignity was as natural and as instinctive as Washington’s, though of a different kind. His supreme intellect easily avoided all positions in which he would have to confess or make admissions; and, as there was nothing morbid in his character, so there was nothing morbid in his frankness.

The frankness seems to have been closely connected with his serenity and courage. There never was a man so little disturbed by consequences or possibilities. He was quick to take advantage of popular whims, and he would not expose himself unnecessarily to public censure. His letter to President Stiles, of Yale, is an example. Being asked for his religious opinion, he states it fully and without reserve, although knowing that it would be extremely distasteful to the man to whom it was addressed, and, if made public, would bring upon him the enmity of the most respectable people in the country, whose good opinion every one wishes to secure. The only precaution he takes is to ask the president not to publish what he says, and he gives his reasons as frankly as he gives the religious opinion. But if the letter had been published before his death, he would have lost neither sleep nor appetite, and doubtless, by some jest or appeal to human sympathy, would have turned it to good account.

Since his time there have been self-made men in this country who have advanced themselves by professing fulsome devotion to the most popular forms of religion, and they have found this method very useful in their designs on financial institutions or public office. We would prefer them to take Franklin for their model; and they may have all his failings if they will only be half as honest.

But to return to his designs for a wife, which were by no means romantic. Miss Read, for whom he had a partiality, had married one Rogers during Franklin’s absence in London. Rogers ill treated and deserted her, and, dejected and melancholy, she was now living at home with her mother. She and Franklin had been inclined to marry before he went to London, but her mother prevented it. According to his account, she had been in love with him; but, although he liked her, we do not understand that he was in love. He never seems to have been in love with any woman in the sense of a romantic or exalted affection, although he flirted with many, both young and old, almost to the close of his life.

But now, on renewing his attentions, he found that her mother had no objections. There was, however, one serious difficulty, for Mr. Rogers, although he had deserted her, was not known to be dead, and divorces were but little thought of at that time. Franklin naturally did not want to add bigamy to his other youthful offences, and it would also have required a revision of his liturgy and code. Rogers had, moreover, left debts which Franklin feared he might be expected to pay, and he had had enough of that sort of thing. “We ventured, however,” he says, “over all these difficulties, and I took her to wife September 1, 1730.” None of the inconveniences happened, for neither Rogers nor his debts ever turned up.

Franklin’s detractors have always insisted that no marriage ceremony was performed and that he was never legally married. There is no record of such a marriage in Christ Church, of which Mrs. Rogers was a member, and the phrase used, “took her to wife,” is supposed to show that they simply lived together, fearing a regular ceremony, which, if Rogers was alive, would convict them of bigamy. The absence of any record of a ceremony is, however, not necessarily conclusive that there was no ceremony of any kind; and the question is not now of serious importance, for they intended marriage, always regarded themselves as man and wife, and, in any event, it was a common-law marriage. Their children were baptized in Christ Church as legitimate children, and in a deed executed three or four years after 1730 they are spoken of as husband and wife.

A few months after the marriage his illegitimate son William was born, and Mr. Bigelow has made the extraordinary statement, “William may therefore be said to have been born in wedlock, though he was not reputed to be the son of Mrs. Franklin.”12 This is certainly an enlarged idea of the possibilities of wedlock, and on such a principle marriage to one woman would legitimatize the man’s illegitimate offspring by all others. It is difficult to understand the meaning of such a statement, unless it is an indirect way of suggesting that William was the son of Mrs. Franklin; but of this there is no evidence.

Franklin always considered his neglect of Miss Read after he had observed her affection for him one of the errors of his life. He had almost forgotten her while in London, and after he returned appears to have shown her no attention, until, by the failure of the match Mrs. Godfrey had arranged for him, he was driven to the determination to marry some one. He believed that he had largely corrected this error by marrying her. “She proved a good and faithful helpmate,” he says; “assisted me much by attending the shop; we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavored to make each other happy.” She died in 1774, while Franklin was in England.

There is nothing in anything he ever said to show that they did not get on well together. On the contrary, their letters seem to show a most friendly companionship. He addressed her in his letters as “my dear child,” and sometimes closed by calling her “dear Debby,” and she also addressed him as “dear child.” During his absence in England they corresponded a great deal. Her letters to him were so frequent that he complained that he could not keep up with them; and his letters to her were written in his best vein, beautiful specimens of his delicate mastery of language, as the large collection of them in the possession of the American Philosophical Society abundantly shows.

In writing to Miss Catharine Ray, afterwards the wife of Governor Greene, of Rhode Island, who had sent him a cheese, he said, —

“Mrs. Franklin was very proud that a young lady should have so much regard for her old husband as to send him such a present. We talk of you every time it comes to the table. She is sure you are a sensible girl, and a notable housewife, and talks of bequeathing me to you as a legacy; but I ought to wish you a better, and I hope she will live these hundred years; for we are grown old together, and if she has any faults, I am so used to them that I don’t perceive them. As the song says, —

“‘Some faults we have all, & so has my Joan,But then they’re exceedingly small;And, now I’m grown used to them, so like my own,I scarcely can see them at all,My dear friends,I scarcely can see them at all.’

“Indeed I begin to think she has none, as I think of you. And since she is willing I should love you as much as you are willing to be loved by me, let us join in wishing the old lady a long life and a happy one.”

While absent at an Indian conference on the frontier, he wrote reprovingly to his wife for not sending him a letter:

“I had a good mind not to write to you by this opportunity; but I never can be ill natured enough even when there is the most occasion. I think I won’t tell you that we are well, nor that we expect to return about the middle of the week, nor will I send you a word of news; that’s poz. My duty to mother, love to the children, and to Miss Betsey and Gracy. I am your loving husband.

“P. S. I have scratched out the loving words; being writ in haste by mistake when I forgot I was angry.”

Mrs. Franklin was a stout, handsome woman. We have a description of her by her husband in a letter he wrote from London telling her of the various presents and supplies he had sent home:

“I also forgot, among the china, to mention a large fine jug for beer, to stand in the cooler. I fell in love with it at first sight; for I thought it looked like a fat jolly dame, clean and tidy, with a neat blue and white calico gown on, good natured and lovely, and put me in mind of somebody.”

This letter is full of interesting details. He tells her of the regard and friendship he meets with from persons of worth, and of his longing desire to be home again. A full description of the articles sent would be too long to quote entire, but some of it may be given as a glimpse of their domestic life:

“I send you some English china; viz, melons and hams for a dessert of fruit or the like; a bowl remarkable for the neatness of the figures, made at Bow, near this city; some coffee cups of the same; a Worcester bowl, ordinary. To show the difference of workmanship, there is something from all the china works in England; and one old true china bason mended, of an odd color. The same box contains four silver salt ladles, newest but ugliest fashion; a little instrument to core apples; another to make little turnips out of great ones; six coarse diaper breakfast cloths; they are to spread on the tea table, for nobody breakfasts here on the naked table, but on the cloth they set a large tea board with the cups. There is also a little basket, a present from Mrs. Stevenson to Sally, and a pair of garters for you, which were knit by the young lady, her daughter, who favored me with a pair of the same kind; the only ones I have been able to wear, as they need not be bound tight, the ridges in them preventing their slipping. We send them therefore as a curiosity for the form, more than for the value. Goody Smith may, if she pleases, make such for me hereafter. My love to her.”

At the time of the Stamp Act, in 1765, when the Philadelphians were much incensed against Franklin for not having, as they thought, sufficiently resisted, as their agent in England, the passage of the act, the mob threatened Mrs. Franklin’s house, and she wrote to her husband:

“I was for nine days kept in a continual hurry by people to remove, and Sally was persuaded to go to Burlington for safety. Cousin Davenport came and told me that more than twenty people had told him it was his duty to be with me. I said I was pleased to receive civility from anybody, so he staid with me some time; towards night I said he should fetch a gun or two, as we had none. I sent to ask my brother to come and bring his gun also, so we turned one room into a magazine; I ordered some sort of defense up stairs such as I could manage myself. I said when I was advised to remove, that I was very sure you had done nothing to hurt anybody, nor had I given any offense to any person at all, nor would I be made uneasy by anybody, nor would I stir or show the least uneasiness, but if any one came to disturb me I would show a proper resentment. I was told that there were eight hundred men ready to assist anyone that should be molested.”

This letter is certainly written in a homely and pleasant way, not unlike the style of her husband, and other letters of hers have been published at different times possessing the same merit; but they have all been more or less corrected, and in some instances rewritten, before they appeared in print, for she was a very illiterate woman. I have not access to the original manuscript of the letter I have quoted, but I will give another, which is to be found in the collection of the American Philosophical Society, exactly as she wrote it:

October ye 29, 1773.

“My Dear Child

“I have bin very much distrest a boute as I did not oney letter nor one word from you nor did I hear one word from oney bodey that you wrote to So I must submit and indever to submit to what I ame to bair I did write by Capt Folkner to you but he is gone doun and when I read it over I did not like it and so if this dont send it I shante like it as I donte send you oney news nor I donte go abrode.

“I shall tell you what consernes myself our yonegest Grandson is the finest child as alive he has had the small Pox and had it very fine and got abrod agen Capt All will tell you a boute him Benj Franklin Beache but as it is so deficall to writ I have desered him to tell you I have sente a squerel for your friend and wish her better luck it is a very fine one I have had very bad luck with two they one killed and another run a way allthou they was bred up tame I have not a caige as I donte know where the man lives that makes them my love to Sally Franklin – my love to all our cousins as thou menthond remember me to Mr and Mrs Weste due you ever hear aney thing of Ninely Evers as was.

“I cante write any mor I am your afeckthone wife

“D. Franklin”

She was not a congenial companion for Franklin in most of his tastes and pursuits, in his studies in science and history, or in his political and diplomatic career. He never appears to have written to her on any of these subjects. But she helped him, as he has himself said, in the early days in the printing-office, buying rags for the paper and stitching pamphlets. It was her homely, housewifely virtues, handsome figure, good health, and wholesome common sense which appealed to him; and it was a strong appeal, for he enjoyed these earthly comforts fully as much as he did the high walks of learning in which his fame was won. He once wrote to her, “it was a comfort to me to recollect that I had once been clothed from head to foot in woolen and linen of my wife’s manufacture, and that I never was prouder of any dress in my life.”

She bore him two children. The first was a son, Francis Folger Franklin, an unusually bright, handsome boy, the delight of all that knew him. Franklin had many friends, and seems to have been very much attached to his wife, but this child was the one human being whom he loved with extravagance and devotion. Although believing in inoculation as a remedy for the small-pox, he seems to have been unable to bear the thought of protecting in this way his favorite son; at any rate, he neglected to take the precaution, and the boy died of the disease when only four years old. The father mourned for him long and bitterly, and nearly forty years afterwards, when an old man, could not think of him without a sigh.

The other child was a daughter, Sarah, also very handsome, who married Richard Bache and has left numerous descendants. His illegitimate son, William, was brought home when he was a year old and cared for along with his other children; and William’s illegitimate son, Temple Franklin, was the companion and secretary of his grandfather in England and France. The illegitimate daughter was apparently never brought home, and is not referred to in his writings, except in those occasional letters in which he sends her his love. According to the letter already mentioned as in the collection of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, she was married to John Foxcroft, who was deputy colonial postmaster in Philadelphia. It was well that she was kept away from Franklin’s house, for the presence of William appears to have given trouble enough. A household composed of legitimate and illegitimate children is apt to be inharmonious at times, especially when the mother of the legitimate children is the mistress of the house.

Franklin’s biographies tell us that Mrs. Franklin tenderly nurtured William. This may be true, and, judging from expressions in her printed letters, she seems to have been friendly enough with him. But from other sources we find that as William grew up she learned to hate him, and this, with some other secrets of the Franklin household, has been described in the diary of Daniel Fisher:

“As I was coming down from my chamber this afternoon a gentlewoman was sitting on one of the lowest stairs which were but narrow, and there not being room enough to pass, she rose up & threw herself upon the floor and sat there. Mr. Soumien & his Wife greatly entreated her to arise and take a chair, but in vain, she would keep her seat, and kept it, I think, the longer for their entreaty. This gentlewoman, whom though I had seen before I did not know, appeared to be Mrs. Franklin. She assumed the airs of extraordinary freedom and great Humility, Lamented heavily the misfortunes of those who are unhappily infected with a too tender or benevolent disposition, said she believed all the world claimed a privilege of troubling her Pappy (so she usually calls Mr. Franklin) with their calamities and distresses, giving us a general history of many such wretches and their impertinent applications to him.” (Pennsylvania Magazine of History, vol. xvii. p. 271.)

In the pamphlet called “What is Sauce for a Goose is also Sauce for a Gander,” already alluded to, Franklin is spoken of as “Pappy” in a way which seems to show that the Philadelphians knew his wife’s nickname for him and were fond of using it to ridicule him.

Afterwards, Daniel Fisher lived in Franklin’s house as his clerk, and thus obtained a still more intimate knowledge of his domestic affairs.

“Mr. Soumien had often informed me of great uneasiness and dissatisfaction in Mr. Franklin’s family in a manner no way pleasing to me, and which in truth I was unwilling to credit, but as Mrs. Franklin and I of late began to be Friendly and sociable I discerned too great grounds for Mr. Soumien’s Reflections, arising solely from the turbulence and jealousy and pride of her disposition. She suspecting Mr. Franklin for having too great an esteem for his son in prejudice of herself and daughter, a young woman of about 12 or 13 years of age, for whom it was visible Mr. Franklin had no less esteem than for his son young Mr. Franklin. I have often seen him pass to and from his father’s apartment upon Business (for he does not eat, drink, or sleep in the House) without the least compliment between Mrs. Franklin and him or any sort of notice taken of each other, till one Day as I was sitting with her in the passage when the young Gentleman came by she exclaimed to me (he not hearing): —

“‘Mr. Fisher there goes the greatest Villain upon Earth.’

“This greatly confounded & perplexed me, but did not hinder her from pursuing her Invectives in the foulest terms I ever heard from a Gentlewoman.” (Pennsylvania Magazine of History, vol. xvii. p. 276.)

Fisher’s descriptions confirm the gossip which has descended by tradition in many Philadelphia families. He found Mrs. Franklin to be a woman of such “turbulent temper” that this and other unpleasant circumstances forced him to leave. Possibly these were some of the faults which her husband speaks of as so exceedingly small and so like his own that he scarcely could see them at all. The presence of her husband’s illegitimate son must have been very trying, and goes a long way to excuse her.

All that Franklin has written about himself is so full of a serene philosophic spirit, and his biographers have echoed it so faithfully, that, in spite of his frankness, things are made to appear a little easier than they really were. His life was full of contests, but they have not all been noted, and the sharpness of many of them has been worn off by time. In Philadelphia, where he was engaged in the most bitter partisan struggles, where the details of his life were fully known, – his humble origin, his slow rise, his indelicate jokes, and his illegitimate children, – there were not a few people who cherished a most relentless antipathy towards him which neither his philanthropy nor his philosophic and scientific mind could soften. This bitter feeling against the “old rogue,” as they called him, still survives among some of the descendants of the people of his time, and fifty or sixty years ago there were virtuous old ladies living in Philadelphia who would flame into indignation at the mention of his name.