The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin Page 11

  By 1756 Franklin must have thought he was on top of the world. No one had seen more of America, and no one knew more important people in the colonies, than he. He was in a position, he thought, to accomplish extraordinary things. “Life,” he wrote that year, was “like a dramatic Piece” and thus “should not only be conducted with Regularity, but methinks it should finish handsomely. Being now in the last Act, I begin to cast about for something fit to end with.”54 Of course, he could scarcely have foreseen how handsomely it would end. At this point in the drama of his life he wanted only to help shape the future of the entity he most admired—the British Empire.

  In 1754, while formulating the Albany Plan, he had envisioned two new colonies being created in the West “between the present frontiers of our colonies on one side, and the lakes and Mississippi on the other.” These colonies, he said, would lead “to the great increase of Englishmen, English trade, and English power.” The Crown should grant to the contributors and settlers of these colonies “as many and as great privileges and powers of government... as his Majesty in his wisdom shall think for their benefit and encouragement, consistent with the general good of the British empire.”55

  This dream of landed empires in the West was one he long clung to and one he shared with his son William. Two years later he fantasized with his friend the evangelical preacher George Whitefield about their being “jointly employ’d by the Crown to settle a Colony on the Ohio.... What a glorious Thing it would be, to settle in that fine country a large Strong Body of Religious and Industrious People! What a Security to the Other Colonies: and Advantageous to Britain, by Increasing her People, Territory, Strength, and Commerce.” He and Whitefield could spend the remainder of their lives in such an endeavor, and “God would bless us with Success, if we undertook it with a sincere Regard to his Honour, the Service of our gracious King, and (which is the same thing) the Publick Good.”56

  MISSION TO GREAT BRITAIN

  Franklin was very much the loyal Englishman. Although few Americans in the 1750s expressed anything other than deep loyalty to the mother country, Franklin did seem to have an unusual degree of confidence in his gracious king. He was in fact coming to believe that royal authority might even supplant the proprietary government of Pennsylvania.

  With the legislature and the governor continuing to wrangle over the issue of taxing the proprietary lands, the assembly early in 1757 decided to send a mission to England to argue its case with the proprietors and, if that should fail, with the British government. The assembly’s ostensible aim was to get the proprietors to change their attitude toward taxing their lands and to cease issuing oppressive instructions to their gubernatorial appointees; but behind the negotiations with the proprietors lay the threat of seeking to have Parliament remove the Penns from control of Pennsylvania.

  Naturally, the fifty-one-year-old Franklin was selected as emissary. He could not have been more excited by the prospect of going “home to England,” to the metropolitan center of the empire.57 At last he would have an arena fit for what he assumed would be the final act of his remarkable life.58

  He knew he was leaving “some Enemies in Pensilvania, who will take every Opportunity of injuring me in my Absence.” To “watch” these enemies and “guard my Reputation and Interest as much as may be from the Effects of their Malevolence,” he turned to the young lawyer Joseph Galloway, a friend who had helped to train his son William in the law. Indeed, this wealthy and well-connected future loyalist, in whose care Franklin “chearfully” left his “dearest Concerns,” became his principal political ally and Pennsylvania confidant during his many years in London.59

  Not surprisingly, Franklin decided to take the twenty-seven-year-old

  William with him to London. The father and son had grown increasingly close in recent years. William had accompanied his father to the Albany conference, had aided him in rounding up supplies for General Braddock’s ill-fated expedition, and had enjoyed his father’s company during the military buildup on the frontier. In fact, from the beginning Franklin had sought to give William every advantage that he had lacked as a boy. Instead of being taken out of school after only two years, William was sent to the best schools in Philadelphia. William did not have to borrow books or learn a trade. It was clear at the outset that William would be a gentleman who would never have to work for a living with his hands.

  If it was inevitable that Franklin would take his son with him to London, it was equally inevitable that he would leave Deborah and his fourteen-year-old daughter, Sally, at home. To be sure, Deborah said she feared crossing the ocean, but no doubt she also knew that the London world that Franklin was entering would not be for her. If she was not invited to the homes of the Philadelphia gentry, how much more out of place would she be amid the sophistication and elegance of London? Besides, Franklin was becoming used to being with William away from the women of the family. In the summer of 1755, a visitor to the Franklin household reported that Deborah had accused her husband of “having too great an esteem for his son in prejudice of herself and daughter.” She certainly had misgivings about her husband and William’s leaving for what was likely to be an extended stay in London, but she promised her husband that she would never complain60

  THE WAY TO WEALTH

  Knowing he was off to England for some time, Franklin decided to bring the writing of his Poor Richard’s Almanack to an end. While at sea in the summer of 1757, he completed a preface for the final, 1758 edition. Unlike his earlier prefaces, which were usually a page long, this preface, entitled “Father Abraham’s Speech,” and later known as The Way to Wealth, ran about a dozen pages. It eventually became the most widely reprinted of all Franklin’s works, including the Autobiography

  In this preface Franklin introduced a new persona, Father Abraham, who presumably carries biblical authority and wisdom and yet in fact seems to be a comic figure. When a crowd of shoppers waiting for an auction to begin asks Father Abraham to comment on the economic condition of the country, the old man rises and begins spouting a series of aphorisms taken from previous editions of Poor Richard’s Almanack, repeating over and over again “as Poor Richard Says.” But instead of drawing indiscriminately from the wide variety of proverbs in the earlier almanacs that dealt with all sorts of social and domestic issues, Father Abraham cites only those proverbs that concern hard work, thrift, and financial prudence, such as “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy and wise." At the end of Father Abraham’s harangue, says Franklin’s Richard Saunders persona, the audience heard his counsel, “approved the Doctrine, and immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common sermon.” When the auction finally opened, “they began to buy extravagantly, notwithstanding his Cautions and their own Fear of Taxes.”61

  It has been suggested that Franklin was taking the opportunity in this, his last almanac and last series of proverbs, to question the whole project of using maxims to reform behavior. In other words, he was warning his readers not to take all his proverbial advice too literally. Remember, he has Father Abraham finally caution, people cannot get rich on their own; God has something to do with a person’s prosperity.62

  Franklin could only believe that God was now firmly on his side. He had all the wealth he needed, and this time, unlike thirty years earlier, he was off to London as a full-fledged gentleman.

  LONDON

  This time he was emotionally prepared for London; indeed, he so fell in love with Britain that he eventually found it difficult to contemplate going back to America. Along with Dr. Johnson, he came to believe that to love London was to love life and to love life was to love London. London, with its three quarters of a million people, was much larger than it had been thirty years earlier and even more a world unto itself. One in ten Englishmen lived there. Despite its own exceedingly rapid growth, Philadelphia, with fewer than twenty thousand people, could not compare at all to this teeming metropolis. London’s appalling poverty and gin-soaked slums were still prese
nt, but the city was improving itself, erecting impressive new Palladian buildings and laying out large elegant squares and crescents. The expensive Westminster Bridge across the Thames had just recently been completed, and the West End, “the polite end of the town,” was being rapidly developed. London was drawing talented people from all over the greater British world—men such as David Hume, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Dr. Johnson, David Garrick, James Boswell, and now, of course, Benjamin Franklin. Not only was London the largest city in Europe, but, some thought, it might become the most grand as well. But this was not to be: it was too noisy, too busy, too turbulent, and too free. In London, James Boswell discovered, “we may be in some degree whatever character we choose.”63

  Amid the cosmopolitan excitement of this world-class cultural center—with its numerous clubs, coffeehouses, and theaters—Franklin began to realize just how limited and parochial life was in the distant colonies. Instead of the brief mission that he originally expected, he stayed for more than five years, and then, after a two-year trip back to Philadelphia, he returned to London for another ten years. He came close to staying forever.

  He and William and two slaves were soon comfortably ensconced in the apartments of Margaret Stevenson, a widow living with her daughter Mary, called Polly, at No. 7 (later No. 36) Craven Street, near Charing Cross and the fabulous shopping mall of the Strand, and only a short walk from the government offices of Whitehall (see page 86).64 As long as he stayed in London, he lived with the Stevensons, where everything, he said, was “pretty genteel.” Mrs. Stevenson and Polly seemed to make up for the absence of Deborah Franklin and Sally. Indeed, he soon came to lavish much more emotion on this surrogate family than he did on his real one back in Philadelphia. The best he could do for his wife and daughter back home, it seemed, was to send them portraits of himself that he commissioned.65

  At last he met friends with whom he had corresponded for years but had never set eyes upon, men like Peter Collinson, the Quaker merchant,

  Franklin’s house on Craven Street, London

  naturalist, and member of the Royal Society, and William Strahan, the Scottish-born printer of Dr. Johnson’s dictionary and the first volumes of David Hume’s history of England and later a member of Parliament. They in turn introduced him to ever widening circles of important people. With his affable nature Franklin was as “clubbable” as Dr.Johnson said James Boswell was, and he joined several clubs, where he met all sorts of scientists, philanthropists, and explorers, including Captain James Cook and Joseph Priestley.66 His favorite club was the Club of Honest Whigs, whose members included his close friends the Quaker physician Dr. John Fothergill and the Scottish scientist John Pringle, who was physician to the Earl of Bute, George Ill’s confidant and favored minister in the early 1760s. Dr. Pringle, soon to be president of the Royal Society and physician to the king himself, eventually became one of Franklin’s most intimate friends.

  Franklin’s scientific reputation preceded him and opened dozens of doors. He was invited to Cambridge University, where in May 1758 he performed some of his electrical experiments. He enjoyed his visit so much that he and his son went back in July for the university’s commencement ceremonies. He and William, he told Deborah, “were present at all the ceremonies, dined every day in their halls, and my vanity was not a little gratified by the particular regard showed by the chancellor and vice-chancellor of the university, and the heads of colleges.”67 A year later the University of St. Andrews in Scotland conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, which resulted in his thereafter being called “Dr. Franklin.” Another honorary doctoral degree from Oxford followed in 1762.

  His fame was extraordinary; it was not simply that he was a world-celebrated scientist but that he was a colonial from the far wilderness across the Atlantic. So celebrated was he that enterprising individuals could make money from his image: one of his portraitists, Benjamin Wilson, had engraver James McArdell make mezzotints for sale to the general public. The 1761 print features Franklin in a great white wig with a static electric machine and writing materials on a table with a lightning storm raging in the background. A year or so later a portrait by another artist, Mason Chamberlain, was likewise reproduced, by engraver Edward Fisher, and widely distributed in England and the colonies (see page 88). This portrait also emphasizes Franklin’s erudition, his electrical experiments, and his honorary degrees.68

  LEFT: Franklin, by Benjamin Wilson, c. 1759

  RIGHT: Franklin, mezzotint by James McArdell, 1761

  LEFT: Franklin, by Mason Chamberlain, 1762

  RIGHT: Franklin, mezzotint by Edward Fisher, 1763

  In 1759 Franklin toured Scotland, was made a burgess and guild brother of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and met such Scottish luminaries as William Robertson, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Honors from Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, and the American provinces were one thing; but this acclaim and these honors were coming from the enlightened centers of the British world. His friend Richard Jackson, who would also become an agent or lobbyist for Pennsylvania, even proposed to get him elected to Parliament. But Franklin said he was “too old to think of changing Countries.” He would soon have second thoughts about that possibility. He was as happy as he had ever been in his life.69

  DEBORAH

  Time flew by and the months turned into years. Negotiations with the proprietors, especially with the principal proprietor, Thomas Penn, turned

  Deborah Franklin, by Benjamin Wilson, c. 1759

  out to be slower and more difficult than he expected. But, more important, he soon found that he enjoyed London more and more and was now as much at home in the huge metropolis as he had been in Philadelphia. As early as January 1758, he told his wife that he could not possibly return for at least a year from then. His work, he said, required “both time and patience.”70 By 1760 he had given up even bothering to mention to Deborah when he might return. Although he repeatedly told his wife that he missed her and his daughter, Sally, his letters home soon became more and more perfunctory. Perhaps to ease his conscience over his long absence from his family, he showered gifts on Deborah and Sally. Crate after crate of fine goods were shipped to Philadelphia—carpeting, bedding, tablecloths, blankets, glassware, silverware, shoes, gloves, and curiosities of all sorts. Franklin, who earlier in his life had been happy with his simple pewter spoon and earthen bowl, now spared no expense in spreading luxury over his absent family.

  Franklin’s friend William Strahan wrote a strange and convoluted letter to Deborah and tried to persuade her and Sally to join Franklin in London. He even hinted that there were ladies in London who would sail twice the ocean to get her illustrious husband. But Deborah knew better than to try to enter Franklin’s ever widening London world. She refused Strahan’s appeal, pleading her fear of the ocean, and stayed in Philadelphia.

  Franklin was not surprised by Deborah’s refusal to heed Strahan’s clever and cunning pleas to come over to London. In fact, he told her, he “was much pleas’d” with her answer to Strahan’s “Rhetoric and Art.” He certainly would not have been comfortable with the loud and plain Mrs. Franklin accompanying him on all his calls, dinners, and sojourns. Although Franklin continued to call Deborah his “dear child” and never voiced any feelings about her lack of sophistication, most of his letters to her from London have all the intimacy of a business manager talking to his employee—in sharp contrast to the warm and chatty letters Franklin wrote to his sister Jane Mecom. Deborah was not like John Adams’s Abigail: although she was an efficient and doting wife—“a good and faithful Helpmate,” Franklin called her—she was scarcely an intellectual companion. It is hard, for example, to envision Deborah fully appreciating the charming humor of The Craven Street Gazette, a parody of newspaper gossip about the court that Franklin wrote for the amusement of the Stevensons and their friends.71

  Deborah’s situation was awkward, to say the least. When Strahan told Deborah that Mrs. Stevenson, “a very discreet good gentlewoman,” had nu
rsed Franklin through a two-month illness “with an assiduity, concern, and tenderness, which perhaps, only yourself could equal,” she had no answer. What could she say?72 As a Quaker friend in Philadelphia noted, Deborah and Sally bore Franklin’s “long absence with a more resign’d and Christian Spirit than could be expected.” In fact, the friend added, many Philadelphians were also wondering when Franklin was coming back home.73

  But Franklin, like many other colonists, had always thought of England as “home.” Now he was beginning to identify with Britain even more closely than he had earlier and was actually thinking of following Stra-han’s advice and settling in England permanently. He and his son visited his ancestral home in Northampton and discovered roots and relatives they had not known. When Franklin looked up Deborah’s relatives in Birmingham, he found that “they are industrious, ingenious, working people and think themselves vastly happy that they live in dear old England.”74 The more he thought about the differences between the mother country and the colonies, the more impressed he was with Britain and with the British government.