The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin Page 8

  A GENTLEMAN AT LAST

  In 1748, at the age of forty-two, Franklin believed he had acquired sufficient wealth and gentility to retire from active business. This retirement had far more significance in the mid-eighteenth century than it would today. It meant that Franklin could at last become a gentleman, a man of leisure who no longer would have to work for a living.

  Up to this point Franklin had made a name for himself in Philadelphia essentially as an ingenious tradesman. In organizing and promoting all of his benevolent and philanthropic projects for the city he had generally relied on his fellow middling sorts. As late as 1747 he still chose to identify himself as “A Tradesman of Philadelphia,” which was the pseudonym he used for his pamphlet Plain Truth: Or, Serious Considerations on the Present State of the City of Philadelphia and Province of Pennsylvania. Franklin directed his pamphlet at “the middling People, the Farmers, Shopkeepers and Tradesmen of this city and country,” who, being ignored by “those Great and rich Men”—that is, wealthy merchants and government officials—had to unite and protect themselves from the war with the French that raged all around the colony.111 Franklin followed up his pamphlet by drafting a charter for a “Militia Association” composed of volunteers drawn from the people at large. In essence he proposed that the people of Pennsylvania form a private army.

  But that year Franklin realized that middling sorts could not do everything by themselves. When he met with a group of mostly artisans, as Richard Peters reported to the Penn family, he assumed “the Character of a Tradesman” and praised his “middling” audience for being “the first Movers in every useful undertaking that had been projected for the good of the City—Library Company, Fire Company &c.... By this Artifice,” said Peters, he sought “to animate all the middling Persons to undertake their own Defense in Opposition to the Quakers and the Gentlemen.” But after Franklin had pulled out a draft of his association and read it, and all the middling people present approved it and immediately offered to sign on, Franklin told them that that was not enough. “No,” he said, “let us not sign yet, let us offer it at least to the Gentlemen and if they come into it, well and good, we shall be the better able to carry it into Execution.” It worked, because a few days later, according to Peters, “all the better sort of the People” agreed to the plan.”112

  By 1747 Franklin was changing his mind about his notion of a United Party for Virtue. In 1751 he had thought that virtuous and ingenious men from all ranks could constitute its membership. But now he thought he might be mistaken. Perhaps only gentlemen were the “few in Public Affairs” who were capable of acting “from a meer View of the Good of their Country.” Perhaps those middling people who had occupations— craftsmen and tradesmen, merchants and mechanics—were as yet too occupied with their particular interests to look after the common good. They were, as one genteel poet put it, the “vulgar” caught up “in trade, / Whose minds by miser avarice were sway’d.”113 In other words, Aristotle’s principle that people who worked for a living could never possess virtue was still alive in the mid-eighteenth century. Only gentlemen, as Adam Smith later pointed out, only “those few, who being attached to no particular occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to examine the occupations of other people.”114 Franklin had come to believe that only those who were free of the need for money should be involved in public affairs—a principle that eventually became a fixation with him. He had decided that to be a mover and shaker in the province, he would have to become a gentleman, one of “the better Sort of People” he had earlier scorned.

  He had no intention, however, of becoming one of those “molatto gentlemen,” one of those stupid rich artisans who was way over his head in genteel circles. He had read enough, knew enough, was worldly enough to mingle and converse with the most polite and cultivated gentry in America, indeed, as he later demonstrated, in the courts of Europe as well. He taught himself languages, and learned enough Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and German to read what he needed. And he was rich enough not to have to work as a printer ever again. Few parvenus in history have ever been as well prepared to assume a genteel station in life as Franklin.

  His retirement was a major event for him, and he took it very seriously. He now acquired several slaves and moved to a new and more spacious house in “a more quiet Part of the Town,” renting a house on the northwest corner of Sassafras (Race) and Second Streets. He left his printing office and shop in the old quarters on Market Street, where his new partner David Hall moved in to run the firm. Since most artisans worked where they lived, separating his home from his business in this way was a graphic reminder that Franklin had left his occupation as a tradesman behind.

  As he had long been interested in his family genealogy, sometime before 1751 he adopted a Franklin coat of arms and began sealing his letters with it. He continued to write his Poor Richard’s Almanack without violating his new gentry status, writing being acceptable as a genteel activity, especially if it was done anonymously. For its final decade, until 1757, Franklin called the almanac Poor Richard Improved and made it much more didactic and condescending—perhaps befitting his recently heightened rank.115

  With the same patronizing tone that he brought to the revised version of the almanac, he also wrote in 1748 “Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One.” He more or less designed this piece to counsel all those young men who would emulate his achievement in becoming rich. The secret to “the Way to Wealth,” he said, was plain: “It depends chiefly on two Words, INDUSTRY and FRUGALITY; i.e., Waste neither Time nor Money, but make the best Use of both.” Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them, everything is possible, unless “that Being who governs the World” determines otherwise. Only someone who had been as successful as he had could write with such confidence. Of course, Franklin left out of his advice the most important ingredient involved in his success—his genius.116

  Most important in distinguishing his move into gentility, he had a remarkable coming-out portrait painted to mark the occasion (see page 58). Portraits, after all, had long been attributes of nobility and family rank and were expensive, which is why aspiring gentlemen would be eager to have one. This first portrait of Franklin is attributed to the American-born painter Robert Feke and is like no other of the Franklin portraits we are familiar with. The painting announces the arrival of a gentleman: there is none of the famous Franklin simplicity of dress found in his later portraits. Although his dress is not as elegant as that of many colonial aristocrats, Franklin nevertheless stands in an aristocratic

  Franklin, portrait of a new gentleman, by Robert Feke, 1748

  pose, stiff and mannered and wearing a dark green velvet coat and tightly curled brown wig, with his right arm extended to reveal the frilled ruffle of his silk sleeve."117

  Franklin had waited until he was fully ready for this important step; he did not want to rush it. In that rank-conscious age Franklin had always been sensitive not to act too much beyond his station. “In order to secure my Credit and Character as a Tradesman,” he wrote in his Autobiography, “I took care not only to be in Reality Industrious & frugal, but to avoid all Appearances of the Contrary.” As a tradesman he dressed plainly, shunned places of idle diversion, and put on no airs. Indeed, “to show that I was not above my Business, I sometimes brought home the Paper I purchas’d at the Stores, thro’ the Streets on a Wheelbarrow.” He won his superiors over by allowing them to patronize him. When one member of the legislature, a gentleman of fortune and education, opposed his election as clerk of the assembly, Franklin made him his friend by borrowing a book from him, thus, he would say, demonstrating the truth of an old maxim, “He that has once done you a Kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”118

  Franklin was not the only wealthy colonial artisan or merchant who moved into the gentry in eighteenth-century America, but he was certainly one of the most prominent of those who did. In fact, he had been so long mingling w
ith the gentry and engaged in civic affairs that most gentlemen in Philadelphia scarcely noticed the significance of his retirement. No doubt there were some gentlemen who wondered what this prosperous upstart printer was doing organizing clubs, starting libraries, promoting schools, leading the Masons, and becoming involved in dozens of activities that were well beyond the reach and consciousness of nearly all tradesmen and artisans. Franklin knew he had to take their views and prejudices very much into account and not move upward too rapidly or too conspicuously. Since bright rich colors and elaborate patterns in clothing were associated with nobility and especially high rank, even the dark green, almost black, color of Franklin’s coat in his coming-out portrait suggests that he did not want to overstep his exact position in the social order. He was at last a gentleman, but, sure as he was that he was smarter and more talented than any of them, he was not as yet ready to presume full equality with the leading aristocrats of colonial Philadelphia.119

  Franklin was always sensitive about his proper place in the world. When he had organized the extra-legal Militia Association in Philadelphia in 1747, the year before his retirement, the officers of the Philadelphia regiment had chosen him its colonel. “Conceiving myself unfit,” he had declined the honor. Instead, he recommended Thomas Lawrence, a “Man of Influence,” and instead took his turn as a common soldier in the regiment.120 He conceived himself unfit not because he was ignorant of military matters—this never stopped other eighteenth-century gentlemen from becoming militia colonels—but because he realized that he was not yet quite a gentleman and it might be thought presumptuous of him to act above his social rank.

  By 1756, a decade later, he had become a full-fledged gentleman and was more than ready to become an officer. He then accepted another election to the colonelcy of the militia regiment. His military rank now seemed commensurate with his social status as a well-established gentleman. But by that time he was more than a gentleman. He had become a major player in the politics of the British Empire.121

  TWO

  FRANKLIN’S ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTS

  BECOMING A BRITISH IMPERIALIST

  Becoming a gentleman changed Franklin’s life. He was no longer merely the “honest Tradesman.” He was a different person with different goals. Although he did not hide the fact that he had had only a tradesman’s education (which made his achievements all the more impressive), he certainly did not go about Philadelphia bragging of his humble and obscure origins.1 As his portrait, new home, and new style of living suggested, he was eager to be accepted as a complete gentleman. Of course, there were some in Philadelphia who never forgot where he came from, and no doubt he had to overcome a thousand slights and snubs by sheer genius and persistence and by his remarkable ability to act the part not only of a gentleman of means but, more important for the enlightened eighteenth century, of a gentleman of learning.

  Having “disengag’d ... from private Business,” Franklin was now free to devote himself openly to gentlemanly activities. Once he became a gentleman and a “master of my own time,” Franklin says that he thought he would do what other gentlemen did—write and engage in “Philosophical Studies and Amusements.” As he told the New York official and scientist Cadwallader Colden, he now had “leisure to read, study, make experiments, and converse at large with such ingenious and worthy Men as are pleas’d to honour me with their Friendship or Acquaintance on such Points as may produce something for the common benefit of Mankind, uninterrupted by the little Cares and Fatigues of Business.”2

  For Franklin the most significant of those “Philosophical Studies and Amusements,” and an important inducement for his retiring, was his involvement with electricity. From his earliest years Franklin had been fascinated by all aspects of nature and human behavior. Indeed, throughout his life he retained a childlike sense of curiosity that led him to wonder about the workings of nearly everything. So he wondered about some pelagic crabs he found in seaweed; he wondered about the effects of differing amounts of oil on water; he wondered why an ocean voyage took two weeks longer going west than it did going east. Indeed, he could not drink a cup of tea without wondering why the tea leaves at the bottom gathered in one way rather than in another.3 Things that struck him as new and odd were always worth thinking about, for explaining them might advance the boundaries of knowledge. “For a new appearance,” he later wrote, “if it cannot be explain’d by our old principles, may afford us new ones, of use perhaps in explaining some other obscure parts of natural knowledge.” With such an enlightened need to know and to understand, it was inevitable that he would investigate the wonders of electricity.4

  Electricity was one of those hidden forces, like gravity and magnetism, that came to fascinate every knowledgeable person in the eighteenth century. Initially, however, like so much that we today label “science,” electricity was simply a curious amusement, just a matter of showmen-savants or “electricians” playing parlor tricks with electrostatics, trying to get people to laugh at the way things attracted and repelled one another. The court electrician to Louis XV of France once sent an electric shock through 180 soldiers of the guard who were touching one another, in order to get them to jump simultaneously and amuse the court. To top himself, he did the same with 700 monks, and the king and court were greatly amused.5 On a visit to Boston in 1746 Franklin witnessed a performance by one of these electricians, Dr. Archibald Spencer from Scotland, who had begun his career as a male midwife and would end it as a clergyman.6 One of Spencer’s most spectacular tricks was to suspend a little boy from the ceiling by silken threads while drawing “electric fire”— that is, sparks—from his hands and feet. Although Spencer’s electrical experiments were “imperfectly performed,” they were new to Franklin, and “they equally surpriz’d and pleas’d” him.7 It was just the kind of thing that would excite Franklin’s insatiable curiosity, and soon after he jumped at the opportunity to purchase all Spencer’s apparatus.

  At about the same time Peter Collinson, a wealthy English Quaker merchant interested in science, sent to the Library Company a glass tube and instructions for conducting various electrical experiments. Thomas Penn, the son of William Penn, also presented some electrical apparatus to the Library Company. Franklin borrowed more stuff from his household: thimbles, a vinegar cruet, a cake of wax, a pump handle, the gold leaf of a book binding—anything and everything that could help him experiment with this mysterious force.8 Finally he acquired a Leyden jar, or capacitor (“this miraculous Bottle,” Franklin called it), which allowed for the accumulation of far greater electrical charges.9 With all this equipment Franklin’s enthusiasm ran wild. He threw himself into studying and playing with electricity. “I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done,” he told Collinson in 1747. He practiced his experiments alone and then invited crowds of friends and acquaintances to witness them. For months he had “little leisure for anything else.”10

  Franklin sent Collinson piecemeal reports of his ideas and his experiments. Because he could not know what European philosophers had already discovered and was never really sure of the significance of his findings, he presented them diffidently. He apologized for the crudity and hastiness of his thoughts and generously urged Collinson to share them with whomever he pleased.

  But despite the fact that he was out of touch with the centers of European thought, his ideas were truly original. He concocted for the first time in history what he called an electrical battery for the storing of electrical charges; he created new English words for the new science— conductor, charge, discharge, condense, armature, electrify, and others; he replaced the traditional idea that electricity was of two kinds—vitreous and resinous—with the fact that it was a single “fluid” with positive and negative or plus and minus charges; and he came to understand that the plus and minus charges or states of electrification of bodies must occur in exactly equal amounts—a quantitative principle that is known today as the law of conservation o
f charge, a principle fundamental to all science.”11

  Although he was excited by his findings, he was chagrined that he could not at first discover any practical use for them, and for Franklin, science or philosophy—indeed, every area of thought—had to be useful. Initially the best he could do was to suggest using an electric shock to kill hens and turkeys for eating: it made them unusually tender. The French eventually picked up this technique and, predictably, spent many years trying to use electricity to improve the cooking of food. They even wondered if electricity might not make large animals more tender for eating, but Franklin thought the electrical charge necessary to kill large animals might end up killing the cook instead.12

  Many people had guessed that lightning was an electrical phenomenon, but no one had ever set out a method for proving it until Franklin did in 1749.13 Not only did Franklin explain how lightning was generated, he also suggested that points grounded with conducting wires might be attached to houses, ships, and churches in order to draw off the lightning. The Royal Society in London showed little interest in publishing Franklin’s letters in full; in fact, according to Franklin, some members even laughed at some of his findings, probably convinced that no colonist living on the outer edges of Christendom could produce anything worthwhile. Collinson turned them over to a publisher, who in 1751 brought them out in an eighty-six-page book entitled Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America.14