III Religion and Morals
Franklin’s father and mother were Massachusetts Puritans who, while not conspicuously religious, attended steadily to their religious duties. They lived in Milk Street, Boston, near the Old South Church, and little Benjamin was carried across the street the day he was born and baptized in that venerable building.
He was born on Sunday, January 6, 1706 (Old Style), and if it had occurred in one of the Massachusetts towns where the minister was very strict, baptism might have been refused, for some of the Puritans were so severe in their views of Sabbath-keeping that they said a child born on the Sabbath must have been conceived on the Sabbath, and was therefore hopelessly unregenerate.5
These good men would have found their theory fully justified in Franklin, for he became a terrible example of the results of Sabbath birth and begetting. As soon as opportunity offered he became a most persistent Sabbath-breaker. While he lived with his parents he was compelled to go to church; but when apprenticed to his elder brother, and living away from home, he devoted Sunday to reading and study. He would slip off to the printing-office and spend nearly the whole day there alone with his books; and during a large part of his life Sunday was to him a day precious for its opportunities for study rather than for its opportunities for worship.
His persistence in Sabbath-breaking was fortified by his entire loss of faith in the prevailing religion.
“I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and tho’ some of the dogmas of that persuasion, such as the eternal decrees of God, election, reprobation, etc., appeared to me unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented myself from the public assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying day, I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world and governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.” (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. i. p. 172.)
It will be observed that he speaks of himself as having been educated a Presbyterian, a term which in his time was applied to the Puritans of Massachusetts. We find Thomas Jefferson also describing the New Englanders as Presbyterians, and in colonial times the Quakers in Pennsylvania used the same term when speaking of them. But they were not Presbyterians in the sense in which the word is now used, and their religion is usually described as Congregationalism.
In the earlier part of his Autobiography Franklin describes more particularly how he was led away from the faith of his parents. Among his father’s books were some sermons delivered on the Boyle foundation, which was a fund established at Oxford, England, by Robert Boyle for the purpose of having discourses delivered to prove the truth of Christianity. Franklin read some of these sermons when he was only fifteen years old, and was very much interested in the attacks made in them on the deists, the forerunners of the modern Unitarians. He thought that the arguments of the deists which were quoted to be refuted were much stronger than the attempts to refute them.
Shaftesbury and Collins were the most famous deistical writers of that time. Their books were in effect a denial of the miraculous part of Christianity, and whoever accepted their arguments was left with a belief only in God and the immortality of the soul, with Christianity a code of morals and beautiful sentiments instead of a revealed religion. From reading quotations from these authors Franklin was soon led to read their works entire, and they profoundly interested him. Like their successors, the Unitarians, they were full of religious liberty and liberal, broad ideas on all subjects, and Franklin’s mind tended by nature in that direction.
It seems that Franklin’s brother James was also a liberal. He had been employed to print a little newspaper, called the Boston Gazette, and when this work was taken from him, he started a newspaper of his own, called the New England Courant. His apprentice, Benjamin, delivered copies of it to the subscribers, and before long began to write for it.
The Courant, under the guidance of James Franklin and his friends, devoted itself to ridiculing the government and religion of Massachusetts. A description of it, supposed to have been written by Cotton Mather, tells us that it was “full-freighted with nonsense, unmanliness, raillery, profaneness, immorality, arrogance, calumnies, lies, contradictions, and what not, all tending to quarrels and divisions and to debauch and corrupt the minds and manners of New England.” Among other things, the Courant, as Increase Mather informs us, was guilty of saying that “if the ministers of God approve of a thing, it is a sign it is of the devil; which is a horrid thing to be related.” Its printer and editor was warned that he would soon, though a young man, have to appear before the judgment-seat of God to answer for things so vile and abominable.
Some of the Puritan ministers, under the lead of Cotton Mather, were at that time trying to introduce inoculation as a preventive of small-pox, and for this the Courant attacked them. It attempted to make a sensation out of everything. Increase Mather boasted that he had ceased to take it. To which the Courant replied that it was true he was no longer a subscriber, but that he sent his grandson every week to buy it. It was a sensational journal, and probably the first of its kind in this country. People bought and read it for the sake of its audacity. It was an instance of liberalism gone mad and degenerated into mere radicalism and negation.
Some of the articles attributed to Franklin, and which were in all probability written by him, were violent attacks on Harvard College, setting forth the worthlessness of its stupid graduates, nearly all of whom went into the Church, which is described as a temple of ambition and fraud controlled by money. There is a touch of what would now be called Socialism or Populism in these articles, and it is not surprising to find the author of them afterwards writing a pamphlet in favor of an inflated paper currency.
The government of Massachusetts allowed the Courant to run its wicked course for about a year, and then fell upon it, imprisoning James Franklin for a month in the common jail. Benjamin conducted the journal during the imprisonment of his brother, who was not released until he had humbly apologized. The Courant then went on, and was worse than ever, until an order of council was issued forbidding its publication, because it had mocked religion, brought the Holy Scriptures into contempt, and profanely abused the faithful ministers of God, as well as His Majesty’s government and the government of the province.
The friends of James Franklin met and decided that they would evade the order of council. James would no longer print the paper, but it should be issued in the name of Benjamin. So Benjamin’s papers of apprenticeship were cancelled, lest it should be said that James was still publishing the paper through his apprentice. And, in order to retain Benjamin’s services, James secured from him secret articles of apprenticeship. A little essay on “Hat Honor” which appeared in the Courant soon afterwards is supposed to have been written by Benjamin and is certainly in his style.
“In old Time it was no disrespect for Men and Women to be called by their own Names: Adam was never called Master Adam; we never read of Noah Esquire, Lot Knight and Baronet, nor the Right Honourable Abraham, Viscount of Mesopotamia, Baron of Canaan; no, no, they were plain Men, honest Country Grasiers, that took care of their Families and Flocks. Moses was a great Prophet, and Aaron a priest of the Lord; but we never read of the Reverend Moses, nor the Right Reverend Father in God Aaron, by Divine Providence, Lord Arch-Bishop of Israel; Thou never sawest Madam Rebecca in the Bible, my Lady Rachel: nor Mary, tho’ a Princess of the Blood after the death of Joseph, called the Princess Dowager of Nazareth.”
This was funny, irreverent, and reckless, and shows a mind entirely out of sympathy with its surroundings. In after-years Franklin wrote several humorous parodies on the Scriptures, but none that was quite so shocking to religious people as this one.
The Courant, however, was not again molested; but Franklin quarrelled with his brother James, and was severely beaten by him. Feeling that James dare not make public the secret articles of apprenticeship, he resolved to leave him, and was soon on his way to Philadelphia, as has been already related.
He had been at war with the religion of his native province, and, though not yet eighteen years old, had written most violent attacks upon it. It is not likely that he would have prospered if he had remained in Boston, for the majority of the people were against him and he was entirely out of sympathy with the prevailing tone of thought. He would have become a social outcast devoted to mere abuse and negation. A hundred years afterwards the little party of deists who gave support to the Courant increased so rapidly that their opinions, under the name of Unitarianism, became the most influential religion of Massachusetts.6 If Franklin had been born in that later time he would doubtless have grown and flourished on his native soil along with Emerson and Channing, Lowell and Holmes, and with them have risen to greatness. But previous to the Revolution his superb faculties, which required the utmost liberty for their expansion, would have been starved and stunted in the atmosphere of intolerance and repression which prevailed in Massachusetts.
After he left Boston, his dislike for the religion of that place, and, indeed, for all revealed religion, seems to have increased. In London we find him writing the pamphlet “Liberty and Necessity,” described in the previous chapter, and adopting what was in effect the position of Voltaire,—namely, an admission of the existence of some sort of God, but a denial of the immortality of the soul. He went even beyond Voltaire in holding that, inasmuch as God was omnipotent and all-wise, and had created the universe, whatever existed must be right, and vice and virtue were empty distinctions.
I have already told how this pamphlet brought him to the notice of a certain Dr. Lyons, who had himself written a sceptical book, and who introduced Franklin to other philosophers of the same sort who met at an inn called The Horns. But, in spite of their influence, Franklin began to doubt the principles he had laid down in his pamphlet. He had gone so far in negation that a reaction was started in his mind. He tore up most of the hundred copies of “Liberty and Necessity,” believing it to be of an evil tendency. Like most of his writings, however, it possessed a vital force of its own, and some one printed a second edition of it.
His morals at this time were, according to his own account, fairly good. He asserts that he was neither dishonest nor unjust, and we can readily believe him, for these were not faults of his character. In his Autobiography he says that he passed through this dangerous period of his life “without any willful gross immorality or injustice that might have been expected from my want of religion.” In the first draft of the Autobiography he added, “some foolish intrigues with low women excepted, which from the expense were rather more prejudicial to me than to them.” But in the revision these words were crossed out.7
On the voyage from London to Philadelphia he kept a journal, and in it entered a plan which he had formed for regulating his future conduct, no doubt after much reflection while at sea. Towards the close of his life he said of it, “It is the more remarkable as being formed when I was so young and yet being pretty faithfully adhered to quite thro’ to old age.” This plan was not found in the journal, but a paper which is supposed to contain it was discovered and printed by Parton in his “Life of Franklin.” It recommends extreme frugality until he can pay his debts, truth-telling, sincerity, devotion to business, avoidance of all projects for becoming suddenly rich, with a resolve to speak ill of no man, but rather to excuse faults. Revealed religion had, he says, no weight with him; but he had become convinced that “truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life.”
Although revealed religion seemed of no importance to him, he had begun to think that, “though certain actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet probably those actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us or commanded because they were beneficial to us in their own natures, all the circumstances of things considered.”
It was in this way that he avoided and confuted his own argument in the pamphlet “Liberty and Necessity.” He had maintained in it that God must necessarily have created both good and evil. And as he had created evil, it could not be considered as something contrary to his will, and therefore forbidden and wrong in the sense in which it is usually described. If it was contrary to his will it could not exist, for it was impossible to conceive of an omnipotent being allowing anything to exist contrary to his will, and least of all anything which was evil as well as contrary to his will. What we call evil, therefore, must be no worse than good, because both are created by an all-wise, omnipotent being.
This argument has puzzled many serious and earnest minds in all ages, and Franklin could never entirely give it up. But he avoided it by saying that “probably” certain actions “might be forbidden,” because, “all the circumstances of things considered,” they were bad for us, or they might be commanded because they were beneficial to us. In other words, God created evil as well as good; but for some reason which we do not understand he has forbidden us to do evil and has commanded us to do good. Or, he has so arranged things that what we call evil is injurious to us and what we call good is beneficial to us.
This was his eminently practical way of solving the great problem of the existence of evil. It will be said, of course, that it was simply exchanging one mystery for another, and that one was as incomprehensible as the other. To which he would probably have replied that his mystery was the pleasanter one, and, being less of an empty, dry negation and giving less encouragement to vice, was more comforting to live under, “all the circumstances of things considered.”
He says that he felt himself the more confirmed in this course because his old friends Collins and Ralph, whom he had perverted to his first way of thinking, went wrong, and injured him greatly without the least compunction. He also recollected the contemptible conduct of Governor Keith towards him, and Keith was another free-thinker. His own conduct while under the influence of arguments like those in “Liberty and Necessity” had been by no means above reproach. He had wronged Miss Read, whose affections he had won, and he had embezzled Mr. Vernon’s money. So he began to suspect, he tells us, that his early doctrine, “tho’ it might be true, was not very useful.”
When back again in Philadelphia and beginning to prosper a little, he set himself more seriously to the task of working out some form of religion that would suit him. He must needs go to the bottom of the subject; and in this, as in other matters, nothing satisfied him unless he had made it himself. In the year 1728, when he was twenty-two years old, he framed a creed, a most curious compound, which can be given no other name than Franklin’s creed.
Having rejected his former negative belief as not sufficiently practical for his purposes, and having once started creed-building, he was led on into all sorts of ideas, which it must be confessed were no better than those of older creed-makers, and as difficult to believe as anything in revealed religion. But he would have none but his own, and its preparation was, of course, part of that mental training which, consciously or unconsciously, was going on all the time.
He began by saying that he believed in one Supreme Being, the author and father of the gods,—for in his system there were beings superior to man, though inferior to God. These gods, he thought, were probably immortal, or possibly were changed and others put in their places. Each of them had a glorious sun, attended by a beautiful and admirable system of planets. God the Infinite Father, required no praise or worship from man, being infinitely above it; but as there was a natural principle in man which inclined him to devotion, it seemed right that he should worship something.
He went on to say that God had in him some of the human passions, and was “not above caring for us, being pleased with our praise and offended when we slight him or neglect his glory;” which was a direct contradiction of what he had previously said about the Creator being infinitely above praise or worship. “As I should be happy,” says this bumptious youth of twenty-two, “to have so wise, good, and powerful a Being my friend, let me consider in what manner I shall make myself most acceptable to him.”
This good and powerful Being would, he thought, be delighted to see him virtuous, because virtue makes men happy, and the great Being would be pleased to see him happy. So he constructed a sort of liturgy, prefacing it with the suggestion that he ought to begin it with “a countenance that expresses a filial respect, mixed with a kind of smiling that signifies inward joy and satisfaction and admiration,”—a piece of formalism which was rather worse than anything that has been invented by the ecclesiastics he so much despised. At one point in the liturgy he was to sing Milton’s hymn to the Creator; at another point “to read part of some such book as Ray’s Wisdom of God in the Creation, or Blackmore on the Creation.” Then followed his prayers, of which the following are specimens:
“O Creator, O Father, I believe that thou art Good, and that thou art pleased with the pleasure of thy children.
“Praised be thy name for ever.”
“That I may be preserved from Atheism, and Infidelity, Impiety and Profaneness, and in my Addresses to thee carefully avoid Irreverence and Ostentation, Formality and odious Hypocrisy.
“Help me, O Father.
“That I may be just in all my Dealings and temperate in my pleasures, full of Candour and Ingenuity, Humanity and Benevolence.
“Help me, O Father.”
He was doing the best he could, poor boy! but as a writer of liturgies he was not a success. His own liturgy, however, seems to have suited him, and it is generally supposed that he used it for a great many years, probably until he was forty years old. He had it all written out in a little volume, which was, in truth, Franklin’s prayer-book in the fullest sense of the word.
Later in life he appears to have dropped the eccentric parts of it and confined himself to a more simple statement. At exactly what period he made this change is not known. But when he was eighty-four years old, and within a few weeks of his death, Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale College, in a letter asking him to sit for his portrait for the college, requested his opinion on religion. In his reply Franklin said, that as to the portrait he was willing it should be painted, but the artist should waste no time, or the man of eighty-four might slip through his fingers. He then gave his creed, which was that there was one God, who governed the world, who should be worshipped, to whom the most acceptable service was doing good to man, and who would deal justly with the immortal souls of men.
“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is like to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and more observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any peculiar marks of his displeasure.
“I shall only add, respecting myself, having experienced the goodness of that Being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no doubt of its continuance in the next, though without the smallest conceit of meriting such goodness.
“P. S. I confide, that you will not expose me to criticisms and censures by publishing any part of this communication to you. I have ever let others enjoy their religious sentiments, without reflecting on them for those that appeared to me unsupportable or even absurd. All sects here, and we have a great variety, have experienced my good will in assisting them with subscriptions for the building their new places of worship; and, as I have never opposed any of their doctrines, I hope to go out of the world in peace with them all.”
So Franklin’s belief at the close of his life was deism, which was the same faith that he had professed when a boy. From boyish deism he had passed to youthful negation, and from negation returned to deism again. He also in his old age argued out his belief in immortality from the operations he had observed in nature, where nothing is lost; why then should the soul not live?
In the convention that framed the National Constitution in 1787, when there was great conflict of opinion among the members and it seemed doubtful whether an agreement could be reached, he moved that prayers be said by some clergyman every morning, but the motion was lost. In a general way he professed to favor all religions. A false religion, he said, was better than none; for if men were so bad with religion, what would they be without it?
Commenting on the death of his brother John, he said,—
“He who plucks out a tooth, parts with it freely, since the pain goes with it; and he who quits the whole body parts at once with all pains, and possibilities of pains and diseases, which it was liable to or capable of making him suffer. Our friend and we were invited abroad on a party of pleasure, which is to last forever. His chair was ready first, and he is gone before us. We could not all conveniently start together; and why should you and I be grieved at this, since we are soon to follow and know where to find him?”
He not infrequently expressed his views on the future life in a light vein:
“With regard to future bliss, I cannot help imagining that multitudes of the zealously orthodox of different sects who at the last day may flock together in hopes of seeing each other damned, will be disappointed and obliged to rest content with their own salvation.”
His wife was an Episcopalian, a member of Christ Church in Philadelphia, and he always encouraged her, as well as his daughter, to attend the services of that church.
“Go constantly to church,” he wrote to his daughter after he had started on one of his missions to England, “whoever preaches. The act of devotion in the common prayer book is your principal business there, and if properly attended to, will do more towards mending the heart than sermons generally can do. For they were composed by men of much greater piety and wisdom than our common composers of sermons can pretend to be; and therefore, I wish you would never miss the prayer days; yet I do not mean that you should despise sermons even of the preachers you dislike; for the discourse is often much better than the man, as sweet and clear waters come through very dirty earth.”
It does not appear that he himself attended the services of Christ Church, for to the end of his life he was always inclined to use Sunday as a day for study, as he had done when a boy. At one time, soon after he had adopted his curious creed, he was prevailed upon to attend the preaching of a Presbyterian minister for five Sundays successively. But finding that this preacher devoted himself entirely to the explanation of doctrine instead of morals, he left him, and returned, he says, to his own little liturgy.
Not long afterwards another Presbyterian preacher, a young man named Hemphill, came to Philadelphia, and as he was very eloquent and expounded morality rather than doctrine, Franklin was completely captivated, and became one of his regular hearers. We would naturally suppose that a Presbyterian minister able to secure the attention of Franklin was not altogether orthodox, and such proved to be the case. He was soon tried by the synod for wandering from the faith. Franklin supported him, wrote pamphlets in his favor, and secured for him the support of others. But it was soon discovered that the sermons of the eloquent young man had all been stolen from a volume published in England. This was, of course, the end of him, and he lost all his adherents except Franklin, who humorously insisted that he “rather approved of his giving us sermons composed by others, than bad ones of his own manufacture; though the latter was the practice of our common teachers.”
Whitefield, the great preacher who towards the middle of the eighteenth century started such a revival of religion in all the colonies, was, of course, a man of too much ability to escape the serious regard of Franklin, who relates that he attended one of his sermons, fully resolved not to contribute to the collection at the close of it. “I had in my pocket,” he says, “a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded, I began to soften and concluded to give him the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all.”
This seems to have been the only time that Franklin was carried away by preaching. On another occasion, when Whitefield was preaching in Market Street, Philadelphia, Franklin, instead of listening to the sermon, employed himself in estimating the size of the crowd and the power of the orator’s voice. He had often doubted what he had read of generals haranguing whole armies, but when he found that Whitefield could easily preach to thirty thousand people and be heard by them all, he was less inclined to be incredulous.
He and Whitefield became fast friends, and Whitefield stayed at his house. In replying to his invitation to visit him, Whitefield answered, “If you make that offer for Christ’s sake, you will not miss of the reward.” To which the philosopher replied, “Don’t let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ’s sake, but for your sake.” Whitefield often prayed for his host’s conversion, but “never,” says Franklin, “had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard.”
He admitted that Whitefield had an enormous influence, and that the light-minded and indifferent became religious as the result of his revivals. Whether the religion thus acquired was really lasting he has not told us. He was the publisher of Whitefield’s sermons and journals, of which great numbers were sold; but he thought that their publication was an injury to their author’s reputation, which depended principally upon his wonderful voice and delivery. He commented in his bright way on a sentence in the journal which said that there was no difference between a deist and an atheist. “M. B. is a deist,” Whitefield said, “I had almost said an atheist.” “He might as well have written,” said Franklin, “chalk, I had almost said charcoal.”
In spite of his deism and his jokes about sacred things, he enjoyed most friendly and even influential relations with religious people, who might have been supposed to have a horror of him. His conciliatory manner, dislike of disputes, and general philanthropy led each sect to suppose that he was on its side, and he made a practice of giving money to them all without distinction. John Adams said of him,—
“The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker.”
When in England he was the intimate friend of the Bishop of St. Asaph, stayed at his house, and corresponded in the most affectionate way with the bishop’s daughters. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was sent to Canada in company with the Rev. John Carroll, of Maryland, in the hope of winning over that country to the side of the revolted colonies. His tendency to form strong attachments for religious people again showed itself, and he and Carroll, who was a Roman Catholic priest, became life-long friends. Eight years afterwards, in 1784, when he was minister to France, finding that the papal nuncio was reorganizing the Catholic Church in America, he urged him to make Carroll a bishop. The suggestion was adopted, and the first Roman Catholic bishop of the United States owed his elevation to the influence of a deist.
At the same time the members of the Church of England in the successfully revolted colonies were adapting themselves to the new order of things; but, having no bishops, their clergy were obliged to apply to the English bishops for ordination. They were, of course, refused, and two of them applied to Franklin, who was then in Paris, for advice. It was strange that they should have consulted the philosopher, who regarded bishops and ordinations as mere harmless delusions. But he was a very famous man, the popular representative of their country, and of proverbial shrewdness.
He suggested—doubtless with a sly smile—that the Pope’s nuncio should ordain them. The nuncio, though their theological enemy, believed in the pretty delusion as well as they, and his ordination would be as valid as that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He asked the nuncio, with whom he was no doubt on terms of jovial intimacy, if he would do it; but that functionary was of course obliged to say that such a thing was impossible, unless the gentlemen should first become Roman Catholics. So the philosopher had another laugh over the vain controversies of man.
He carried on the joke by telling them to try the Irish bishops, and, if unsuccessful, the Danish and Swedish. If they were refused, which was likely, for human folly was without end, let them imitate the ancient clergy of Scotland, who, having built their Cathedral of St. Andrew, wanted to borrow some bishops from the King of Northumberland to ordain them a bishop for themselves. The king would lend them none. So they laid the mitre, crosier, and robes of a bishop on the altar, and, after earnest prayers for guidance, elected one of their own members. “Arise,” they said to him, “go to the altar and receive your office at the hand of God,” And thus he became the first bishop of Scotland. “If the British isles,” said Franklin, “were sunk in the sea (and the surface of this globe has suffered greater changes) you would probably take some such method as this.” And so he went on enlarging on the topic until he had a capital story to tell Madame Helvetius the next time they flirted and dined together in their learned way.
But his most notable escapade in religion, and one in which his sense of humor seems to have failed him, was his abridgment of the Church of England’s “Book of Common Prayer.” It seems that in the year 1772, while in England as a representative of the colonies, he visited the country-seat of Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord le Despencer, a reformed rake who had turned deist and was taking a gentlemanly interest in religion. He had been, it is said, a companion of John Wilkes, Bubb Doddington, Paul Whitehead, the Earl of Sandwich, and other reckless characters who established themselves as an order of monks at Medmenham Abbey, where they held mock religious ceremonies, and where the trial of the celebrated Chevalier D’Eon was held to prove his disputed sex. An old book, called “Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea,” professes to describe the doings of these lively blades.
Lord Despencer and Franklin decided that the prayer-book was entirely too long. Its prolixity kept people from going to church. The aged and infirm did not like to sit so long in cold churches in winter, and even the young and sinful might attend more willingly if the service were shorter.
Franklin was already a dabster at liturgies. Had he not, when only twenty-two, written his own creed and liturgy, compounded of mythology and Christianity? and had he not afterwards, as is supposed, assisted David Williams to prepare the “Apology for Professing the Religion of Nature,” with a most reasonable and sensible liturgy annexed? Lord Despencer had also had a little practice in such matters in his mock religious rites at the old abbey. Franklin, who was very fond of him, tells of the delightful days he spent at his country-seat, and adds, “But a pleasanter thing is the kind countenance, the facetious and very intelligent conversation of mine host, who having been for many years engaged in public affairs, seen all parts of Europe, and kept the best company in the world, is himself the best existing.”8 I have no doubt that his lordship’s experience had been a varied one; but it is a question whether it was of such a character as to fit him for prayer-book revision. He, however, went seriously to work, and revised all of the book except the catechism and the reading and singing psalms, which he requested Franklin to abridge for him.
The copy which this precious pair went over and marked with a pen is now in the possession of Mr. Howard Edwards, of Philadelphia, and is a most interesting relic. From this copy Lord Despencer had the abridgment printed at his own expense; but it attracted no attention in England. All references to the sacraments and to the divinity of the Saviour were, of course, stricken out and short work made of the Athanasian and the Apostles’ Creed. Even the commandments in the catechism had the pen drawn through them, which was rather inconsistent with the importance that Franklin attached to morals as against dogma. But both editors, no doubt, had painful recollections on this subject; and as Franklin would have been somewhat embarrassed by the seventh, he settled the question by disposing of them all.
The most curious mutilation, however, was in the Te Deum, most of which was struck out, presumably by Lord Despencer. The Venite was treated in a similar way by Franklin. The beautiful canticle, “All ye Works of the Lord,” which is sometimes used in place of the Te Deum, was entirely marked out. As this canticle is the nearest approach in the prayer-book to anything like the religion of nature, it is strange that it should have suffered. But Franklin, though of picturesque life and character, interested in music as a theory, a writer of verse as an exercise, and a lover of the harmony of a delicately balanced prose sentence, had, nevertheless, not the faintest trace of poetry in his nature.
The book, which is now a very rare and costly relic, a single copy selling for over a thousand dollars, was known in America as “Franklin’s Prayer-Book,” and he was usually credited with the whole revision, although he expressly declared in a letter on the subject that he had abridged only the catechism and the reading and singing psalms. But he seems to have approved of the whole work, for he wrote the preface which explains the alterations. A few years after the Revolution, when the American Church was reorganizing itself, the “Book of Common Prayer” was revised and abbreviated by competent hands; and from a letter written by Bishop White it would seem that he had examined the “Franklin Prayer-Book,” and was willing to adopt its arrangement of the calendar of holy days.9
The preface which Franklin wrote for the abridgment was an exquisitely pious little essay. It was written as though coming from Lord Despencer, “a Protestant of the Church of England,” and a “sincere lover of social worship.” His lordship also held “in the highest veneration the doctrines of Jesus Christ,” which was a gratifying assurance.
When Franklin was about twenty-two or twenty-three and wrote his curious creed and liturgy, he seems to have been in that not altogether desirable state of mind which is sometimes vulgarly described as “getting religion.” He was not the sort of man to be carried away by one of those religious revival excitements of which we have seen so many in our time, but he was as near that state as a person of his intellect could be.
Preaching to him and direct effort at his conversion would, of course, have had no effect on such an original disposition. The revival which he experienced was one which he started for himself, and, besides his creed and liturgy, it consisted of an attempt to arrive at moral perfection.
“I wished to live,” he says, “without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew or thought I knew what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other.”
So he prepared his moral code of all the virtues he thought necessary, with his comments thereon, and it speaks for itself:
“1. Temperance.—Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
“2. Silence.—Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
“3. Order.—Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
“4. Resolution.—Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
“5. Frugality.—Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i. e. waste nothing.
“6. Industry.—Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
“7. Sincerity.—Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.
“8. Justice.—Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
“9. Moderation.—Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
“10. Cleanliness.—Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
“11. Tranquillity.—Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
“12. Chastity.—Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
“13. Humility.—Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”
He thought that he could gradually acquire the habit of keeping all these virtues, and instead of attempting the whole at once, he fixed his attention on one at a time, and when he thought he was master of that, proceeded to the next, and so on. He had arranged them in the order he thought would most facilitate their gradual acquisition, beginning with temperance and proceeding to silence; for the mastery of those which were easiest would help him to attain the more difficult. He has, therefore, left us at liberty to judge which were his most persistent sins.
He had a little book with a page for each virtue, and columns arranged for the days of the week, so that he could give himself marks for failure or success. He began by devoting a week to each virtue, by which arrangement he could go through the complete course in thirteen weeks, or four courses in a year.
His intense moral earnestness and introspection were doubtless inherited from his New England origin. But when he was in the midst of all this creed- and code-making, he records of himself:
“That hard to be governed passion of youth had hurried me frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in my way, which were attended with some expense and great inconvenience, besides a continual risk to my health by a distemper, which of all things I dreaded, though by great good luck I escaped it.”
His biographer, Parton, reminds us that his liturgy has no prayer against this vice, and that about a year after the date of the liturgy his illegitimate son William was born. The biographer then goes on to say that Franklin was “too sincere and logical a man to go before his God and ask assistance against a fault which he had not fully resolved to overcome.” There is, however, a prayer in the liturgy against lasciviousness. He had not yet paid Mr. Vernon the money he had embezzled, although he was the author of a prayer asking to be delivered from deceit and fraud, and another against unfaithfulness in trust.10
It is obvious that this inconsistency is very like human nature, especially youthful human nature. There is nothing wonderful in it. It was simply the struggle which often takes place in boys who are both physically and mentally strong. The only thing unusual is that the person concerned has made a complete revelation of it. Such things are generally deeply concealed from the public. But that curious frankness which was mingled with Franklin’s astuteness has in his own case opened wide the doors.
It has been commonly stated in his biographies that he had but one illegitimate child, a son; but from a manuscript letter in the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, written by John Foxcroft, February 2, 1772, and never heretofore printed, it appears that he had also an illegitimate daughter, married to John Foxcroft:
“Philada Feby 2d, 1772.
“Dear Sir
“I have the happiness to acquaint you that your Daughter was safely brot to Bed the 20th ulto and presented me with a sweet little girl, they are both in good spirits and are likely to do very well.
“I was seized with a Giddyness in my head the Day before yesterday wch alarms me a good deal as I had 20 oz of blood taken from me and took physick wch does not seem in the least to have relieved me.
“I am hardly able to write this. Mrs F joins me in best affections to yourself and compts to Mrs Stevenson and Mr and Mrs Huson.
“I am Dr Sir
“Yrs. affectionately
“John Foxcroft.
“Mrs Franklin, Mrs Bache, little Ben & Family at Burlington are all well. I had a letter from ye Govr yesterday
J. F.”
Among the Franklin papers in the State Department at Washington there are copies of a number of letters which Franklin wrote to Foxcroft, and in three of them—October 7, 1772, November 3, 1772, and March 3, 1773—he sends “love to my daughter.” There is also in Bigelow’s edition of his works11 a letter in which he refers to Mrs. Foxcroft as his daughter. The letter I have quoted above was written while Franklin was in England as the representative of some of the colonies, and is addressed to him at his Craven Street lodgings. Foxcroft, who was postmaster of Philadelphia, seems to have been on friendly terms with the rest of Franklin’s family.
Mrs. Bache, whom Foxcroft mentions in the letter, was Franklin’s legitimate daughter, Sarah, who was married. The family at Burlington was the family of the illegitimate son, William, who was the royal governor of New Jersey. This extraordinarily mixed family of legitimates and illegitimates seems to have maintained a certain kind of harmony. The son William, the governor, continued the line through an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, usually known as Temple Franklin. This condition of affairs enables us to understand the odium in which Franklin was held by many of the upper classes of Philadelphia, even when he was well received by the best people in England and France.
In his writings we constantly find him encouraging early marriages; and he complains of the great number of bachelors and old maids in England. “The accounts you give me,” he writes to his wife, “of the marriages of our friends are very agreeable. I love to hear of everything that tends to increase the number of good people.” He certainly lived up to his doctrine, and more.
“Men I find to be a sort of beings very badly constructed, as they are generally more easily provoked than reconciled, more disposed to do mischief to each other than to make reparation, much more easily deceived than undeceived, and having more pride and even pleasure in killing than in begetting one another; for without a blush they assemble in great armies at noonday to destroy, and when they have killed as many as they can they exaggerate the number to augment the fancied glory; but they creep into corners or cover themselves with the darkness of night when they mean to beget, as being ashamed of a virtuous action.” (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. vii. p. 464.)
There has always been much speculation as to who was the mother of Franklin’s son, William, the governor of New Jersey; but as the gossips of Philadelphia were never able to solve the mystery, it is hardly possible that the antiquarians can succeed. Theodore Parker assumed that he must have been the son of a girl whom Franklin would have married if her parents had consented. Her name is unknown, for Franklin merely describes her as a relative of Mrs. Godfrey, who tried to make the match. Parker had no evidence whatever for his supposition. He merely thought it likely; and, as a Christian minister, it would perhaps have been more to his credit if he had abstained from attacking in this way the reputation of even an unnamed young woman. An English clergyman, Rev. Bennet Allen, writing in the London Morning Post, June 1, 1779, when the ill feeling of the Revolution was at its height, says that William’s mother was an oyster wench, whom Franklin left to die of disease and hunger in the streets. The gossips, indeed, seem to have always agreed that the woman must have been of very humble origin.
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.
Chief-Justice Allen, who was his contemporary and opponent in politics, described him as a man of “wicked heart,” and declared that he had often been a witness of his “envenomed malice.” In H. W. Smith’s “Life of Rev. William Smith” a great deal of this abuse can be found. Provost Smith and Franklin quarrelled over the management of the College of Philadelphia, and on a benevolent pamphlet by the provost Franklin wrote a verse from the poet Whitehead:13
“Full many a peevish, envious, slanderous elf
Is in his works, Benevolence itself
For all mankind, unknown his bosom heaves,
He only injures those with whom he lives.
Read then the man. Does truth his actions guide?
Exempt from petulance, exempt from pride?
To social duties does his heart attend—As
son, as father, husband, brother, friend?
Do those who know him love him? If they do
You have my permission—you may love him too.”
(Smith’s Life of Rev. William Smith, vol. i. p. 341.)
Provost Smith’s biographer resents this attack by giving contemporary opinions of Franklin; and a paragraph omitted in the regular edition (page 347 of volume i.), but printed on an extra leaf and circulated among the author’s friends, may be quoted as an example. It was, however, not original with Smith’s biographer, but was copied with a few changes from Cobbett’s attack on Franklin:
“Dr. Benjamin Franklin has told the world in poetry what, in his judgment, my ancestor was. His venerable shade will excuse me, if I tell in prose what, in the judgment of men who lived near a century ago, Dr. Smith was not: He was no almanack maker, nor quack, nor chimney-doctor, nor soap boiler, nor printer’s devil, neither was he a deist; and all his children were born in wedlock. He bequeathed no old and irrecoverable debts to a hospital. He never cheated the poor during his life nor mocked them in his death. If his descendants cannot point to his statue over a library, they have not the mortification of hearing him daily accused of having been a fornicator, a hypocrite, and an infidel.”
Some of the charges in this venomous statement are in a sense true, but are exaggerated by the manner in which they are presented, an art in which Cobbett excelled. I have in the preceding chapters given sufficient details to throw light on many of them. Franklin was an almanac-maker, a chimney-doctor, and a soap-boiler, but in none of these is there anything to his discredit. As to his irrecoverable debts, it is true that he left them to the Pennsylvania Hospital, saying in his will that, as the persons who owed them were unwilling to pay them to him, they might be willing to pay them to the hospital as charity. They were a source of great annoyance to the managers, and were finally returned to his executors. The statement that he cheated the poor during his life and mocked them in his death is entirely unjustified. He was often generous with his money to people in misfortune, and several such instances can be found in his letters. It is also going too far to say that he was a quack and a hypocrite.
While in England he associated on the most intimate terms with eminent literary and scientific men. Distinguished travellers from the Continent called on him to pay their respects. He stayed at noblemen’s country-seats and with the Bishop of St. Asaph. He corresponded with all these people in the most friendly and easy manner; they were delighted with his conversation and could never see enough of him. In France everybody worshipped him, and the court circles received him with enthusiasm. But in Philadelphia the colonial aristocracy were not on friendly terms with him. He had, of course, numerous friends, including some members of aristocratic families; but we find few, if any, evidences of that close intimacy and affection which he enjoyed among the best people of Europe.
This hostility was not altogether due to his humble origin or to the little printing-office and stationery store where he sold goose-feathers as well as writing material and bought old rags. These disadvantages would not have been sufficient, for his accomplishments and wit raised him far above his early surroundings, and the colonial society of Philadelphia was not illiberal in such matters. The principal cause of the hostility towards him was his violent opposition to the proprietary party, to which most of the upper classes belonged, and, having this ground of dislike, it was easy for them to strengthen and excuse it by the gossip about his illegitimate son and the son’s mother kept as a servant in his house. They ridiculed the small economies he practised, and branded his religious and moral theorizing as hypocrisy.
He was very fond of broad jokes, which have always been tolerated in America under certain circumstances; but the man who writes them, especially if he also writes and talks a great deal about religion and undertakes to improve prayer-books, gives a handle to his enemies and an opportunity for unfavorable comment. The Portfolio, a Philadelphia journal, of May 23, 1801, representing more particularly the upper classes of the city, prints one of his broad letters, and takes the opportunity to assail him for “hypocrisy, hackneyed deism, muck-worn economy,” and other characteristics of what it considers humbug and deceit. It has been suggested that far back in the past one of Franklin’s ancestors might have been French, for his name in the form Franquelin was at one time not uncommon in France. This might account for his easy brightness and vivacity, and also, it may be added, for such letters as he sometimes wrote:
“To Mr. James Read
“Saturday morning Aug 17 ’45.
“Dear J.
“I have been reading your letter over again, and since you desire an answer I sit me down to write you; yet as I write in the market, will I believe be but a short one, tho’ I may be long about it. I approve of your method of writing one’s mind when one is too warm to speak it with temper: but being myself quite cool in this affair I might as well speak as write, if I had opportunity. Your copy of Kempis must be a corrupt one if it has that passage as you quote it, in omnibus requiem quaesivi, sed non inveni, nisi in angulo cum libello. The good father understood pleasure (requiem) better, and wrote in angulo cum puella. Correct it thus without hesitation.”
(Portfolio, vol. i. p. 165.)
The letter continues the jest in a way that I do not care to quote; but the last half of it is full of sage and saintly advice. It is perhaps the only letter which gives at the same time both sides of Franklin’s character. But Sparks and Bigelow in their editions of his works give the last half only, with no indication that the first half has been omitted.
In the same year that he wrote this letter he also wrote his letter of advice to a young man on the choice of a mistress, a copy of which is now in the State Department at Washington, while numerous copies taken from it have been circulated secretly all over the country. This year (1745) seems to have been his reckless period, for it was about that time that he published “Polly Baker’s Speech,” which will be given in another chapter. In the State Department at Washington is also preserved his letter on Perfumes to the Royal Academy of Brussels, which cannot be published under the rules of modern taste, and, in fact, Franklin himself speaks of it as having “too much grossièreté” to be borne by polite readers.14 I shall, however, give as much of the letter on the choice of a mistress as is proper to publish.
“June 25th, 1745.
“My Dear Friend:
“I know of no medicine fit to diminish the violent natural inclinations you mention, and if I did, I think I should not communicate it to you. Marriage is the proper remedy. It is the most natural state of man, and, therefore, the state in which you are most likely to find solid happiness. Your reasons against entering it at present appear to me not well founded. The circumstantial advantages you have in view of postponing it are not only uncertain, but they are small in comparison with that of the thing itself.
“It is the man and woman united that make the complete human being. Separate she wants his force of body and strength of reason. He her softness, sensibility, and acute discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the world. A single man has not nearly the value he would have in a state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors. If you get a prudent, healthy wife, your industry in your profession, with her good economy will be a fortune sufficient.
“But if you will not take this counsel, and persist in thinking a commerce with the sex inevitable, then I repeat my former advice, that in all your amours you should prefer old women to young ones. You call this a paradox and demand my reasons. They are these:
“1st. Because they have more knowledge of the world, and their minds are better stored with observations; their conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreeable.
“2d. Because when women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their influence over men, they supply the diminution of beauty by an augmentation of utility. They learn to do a thousand services, small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable, and hence there is scarcely such a thing to be found as an old woman who is not a good woman.
“3d. Because there is no hazard of children, which, irregularly produced, may be attended with much inconvenience.
“4th. Because, through more experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an intrigue to prevent suspicion. The commerce with them is therefore safe with regard to your reputation and with regard to theirs. If the affair should happen to be known, considerate people might be rather inclined to excuse an old woman who would kindly take care of a young man, form his manners by her good counsels, and prevent his ruining his health and fortunes among mercenary prostitutes.
“5th....
“6th....
“7th. Because the compunction is less. The having made a young girl miserable may give you frequent bitter reflections, none of which can attend the making an old woman happy.
“8th and lastly....
“Thus much for my paradox, but I still advise you to marry directly, being sincerely,
“Your Affectionate Friend,
“B. F.”
Franklin, however, was capable of the most courteous gallantry to ladies. In France he delighted the most distinguished women of the court by his compliments and witticisms. When about fifty years old he wrote some letters to Miss Catharine Ray, of Rhode Island, which, as coming from an elderly man to a bright young girl who was friendly with him and told him her love-affairs, are extremely interesting. One of them about his wife we have already quoted. In a letter to him Miss Ray had asked, “How do you do and what are you doing? Does everybody still love you, and how do you make them do so?” After telling her about his health, he said,—
“As to the second question, I must confess (but don’t you be jealous), that many more people love me now than ever did before; for since I saw you, I have been able to do some general services to the country and to the army, for which both have thanked and praised me, and say they love me. They say so, as you used to do; and if I were to ask any favors of them, they would, perhaps, as readily refuse me; so that I find little real advantage in being beloved, but it pleases my humor.”
On another occasion he wrote to her,—
“Persons subject to the hyp complain of the northeast wind as increasing their malady. But since you promised to send me kisses in that wind, and I find you as good as your word, it is to me the gayest wind that blows, and gives me the best spirits. I write this during a northeast storm of snow, the greatest we have had this winter. Your favors come mixed with the snowy fleeces, which are pure as your virgin innocence, white as your lovely bosom, and—as cold. But let it warm towards some worthy young man, and may Heaven bless you both with every kind of happiness.”
He had another young friend to whom he wrote pretty letters, Miss Mary Stevenson, daughter of the Mrs. Stevenson in whose house he lived in London when on his diplomatic missions to England. He encouraged her in scientific study, and some of his most famous explanations of the operations of nature are to be found in letters written to her. He had hoped that she would marry his son William, but William’s fancy strayed elsewhere.
“Portsmouth, 11 August, 1762.
My Dear Polly
“This is the best paper I can get at this wretched inn, but it will convey what is intrusted to it as faithfully as the finest. It will tell my Polly how much her friend is afflicted that he must perhaps never again see one for whom he has so sincere an affection, joined to so perfect an esteem; who he once flattered himself might become his own, in the tender relation of a child, but can now entertain such pleasing hopes no more. Will it tell how much he is afflicted? No, it cannot.
“Adieu, my dearest child. I will call you so. Why should I not call you so, since I love you with all the tenderness of a father? Adieu. May the God of all goodness shower down his choicest blessings upon you, and make you infinitely happier than that event would have made you....”
(Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. iii. p. 209.)
This correspondence with Miss Stevenson continued for a great many years, and there are beautiful letters to her scattered all through his published works. The letters both to her and to Miss Ray became more serious as the two young women grew older and married. Miss Stevenson sought his advice on the question of her marriage, and his reply was as wise and affectionate as anything he ever wrote. She married Dr. Hewson, of London, and they migrated to Philadelphia, where she became the mother of a numerous family.
Franklin had a younger sister, Jane, a pretty girl, afterwards Mrs. Mecom, of whom he was very fond, and he kept up a correspondence with her all his life, sending presents to her at Boston, helping her son to earn a livelihood, and giving her assistance in her old age. Their letters to each other were most homely and loving, and she took the greatest pride in his increasing fame.
His correspondence with his parents was also pleasant and familiar. In one of his letters to his mother he amuses her by accounts of her grandchildren, and at the same time pays a compliment to his sister Jane.
“As to your grandchildren, Will is now nineteen years of age, a tall, proper youth, and much of a beau. He acquired a habit of idleness on the Expedition, but begins of late to apply himself to business, and I hope will become an industrious man. He imagined his father had got enough for him, but I have assured him that I intend to spend what little I have myself, if it pleases God that I live long enough; and, as he by no means wants acuteness, he can see by my going on that I mean to be as good as my word.
“Sally grows a fine girl, and is extremely industrious with her needle, and delights in her work. She is of a most affectionate temper, and perfectly dutiful and obliging to her parents, and to all. Perhaps I flatter myself too much, but I have hopes that she will prove an ingenious, sensible, notable and worthy woman like her aunt Jenny.”
(Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. ii. p. 154.)
Over the grave of his parents in the Granary Burial-Ground in Boston he placed a stone, and prepared for it one of those epitaphs in which he was so skilful and which were almost poems:
Josiah Franklin and Abiah his wife
lie here interred.
They lived together in wedlock fifty-five years;
and without an estate or any gainful employment,
by constant labour, and honest industry,
(with God’s blessing,)
maintained a large family comfortably;
and brought up thirteen children and seven grandchildren reputably.
From this instance, reader,
be encouraged to diligence in thy calling,
and distrust not Providence.
He was a pious and prudent man,
she a discreet and virtuous woman.
Their youngest son,
in filial regard to their memory,
places this stone.
J. F. born 1655—died 1744,—Æ. 89.
A. F. born 1667—died 1752,—Æ. 85.
Footnotes
5 Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. i. p. 210.
6 Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. i. p. 222.
7 Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. i. p. 180.
8 Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. v. p. 209.
9 H. W. Smith’s Life of Rev. William Smith, vol. ii. p. 174.
10 Some years afterwards, when he had become prosperous, he restored the money to Mr. Vernon, with interest to date.
11 Vol. v. p. 201.
12 Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. iii. p. 216, note.
13 This verse Franklin also quotes against Smith in a letter to Miss Stevenson. (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. iii. p. 235.)
14 Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. vii. p. 374.