Book of Ages (34 page)

But by the time Jane reached Cambridge, she was so exhausted that she nearly collapsed, and was confined to bed. Only slowly did she regain her strength. “I go some times to Boston where I am kindly Entertained by Cousen Williams & famely and see a few other Friends,” she wrote to her brother, letting him know that she planned to return to
Elihu Greene’s house come spring, when she was sure that during “all the warm wether” she would be able to “do a number of things nesesary for Him & the Children.”

She was still frustrated that she was, as yet, unable to find a copy of that collection of her brother’s political and philosophical essays: “I have never been able to come at a sight of the Book yet,” she wrote Franklin. “I would gladly bye won if it were to be Purchased but cant find that it is, I wish my Brother would do me the favour to send me won & I may be so Lucky as to Recive it, I would be a grat Amusement to me & that is the most I have to seek after at Present.”
⁷

That spring, six-month-old Jenny Greene died in Rhode Island.
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Meanwhile, Jane received a package from her brother, “after a Total Silance of three years,” as she took pains to point out, “in which Time Part of an old song would Some times Intrude it self into my mind,

Possibly, his letters to her were simply
lost, as he intimated. But even if he hadn’t written, he had hardly neglected her. That year, he arranged
an annuity for her, handled by Jonathan Williams in
Boston, so that she would never have to worry about money again.
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“[I] cannot find Expreshon suitable to acknowlidg my Gratitude,” she wrote back. “How am I by my Dear Brother Enabled to live at Ease in my old Age (after a Life of Care Labour & Anxiety) without which I must have been miserable.”
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Franklin, in Paris, had been negotiating the
peace. “A Grate work Indeed you have Done God be Praised,” Jane wrote him. “I hope now you, your self, will think you have done anouf for the Publick, and will now Put in Execution what you have sometimes wished to be premited to do; sit down & spend the Evening with your Friends.”
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Benjamin Franklin,
John Adams, and
John Jay signed the
Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783. Franklin made sure American
loyalists got very little from that agreement.
¹³
In 1778, William Franklin had been exchanged for an American
prisoner; he had spent the remainder of the war in occupied New York, where he founded the
Board of Associated Loyalists and served as its first president. In many ways, and for many years, William Franklin was considered the greatest traitor in the United States, second only to
Benedict Arnold. He had remained in New York until the end of the war and had then evacuated with the departing British Army. He had been
in London since 1782, eager to see his son and his father, who were in Paris. Franklin had rebuffed him. Only after the treaty was signed did Franklin allow Temple to cross the Channel, in 1784, carrying a letter. “Nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen Sensations,” Franklin wrote to William, “as to find myself deserted in my old Age by my only Son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up Arms against me, in a Cause wherein my good Fame, Fortune and Life were all at Stake.”
¹⁴

He would not forgive him. And he refused to see him. He planned to all but disinherit him. But from his son, to whom he had once addressed the story of his life, he did want something: his manuscripts.

The story of Franklin’s life survives in four parts. In England in 1771, he had written Part I, eighty-seven pages, carrying the story of his life from his birth in 1706 up until 1730. That manuscript he’d brought back with him when he’d returned to Philadelphia in 1775. Before leaving for France in October 1776, he had given a chest of his papers, including the manuscript, to
Joseph Galloway for safekeeping, outside the city. The chest
included “Rough Drafts of all my Letters while I liv’d in London.” Franklin explained this when writing to William in 1784, telling him that, at one point, he had intended these papers to go to him. “These are missing,” Franklin told William. “I hope you have got them. If not, they are lost.”
¹⁵
In November 1776, Galloway, a
loyalist, fled to
British lines, leaving Franklin’s papers behind. Galloway’s house was ransacked, and the trunk was looted, in 1778. Galloway left the country. But his wife stayed behind, and she apparently took care to remove Franklin’s manuscript before leaving the house; it was found among her papers after her death in 1781; the executor of her estate eventually returned it to Franklin. In his will, Franklin bequeathed to William some worthless lands in
Nova Scotia, and one thing more: “I also give to him all my books and papers, which he has in his possession, and all debts standing against him on my account books, willing that no payment for, nor restitution of, the same be required of him, by my executors. The part he acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavoured to deprive me of.” To leave William those of his papers in his possession was to leave him nothing: William had very few of his father’s papers. The rest—the great bulk of his literary remains—Franklin left not to his son, but to his grandson Temple.
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His thoughts had turned to his remains. He began to consider what he might leave his sister.

CHAPTER XXXII

I
n January 1784, Jane moved into the house she would live in till the end of her days, a two-story brick house on Unity Street, in the North End, down the hill from
Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, and just behind the
Old North Church.
¹

Her brother had owned this house since 1748, when he’d acquired the mortgage from their sister Elizabeth Franklin Douse. It had long been rented out, and from 1763 through 1778, the rent, handled by Jonathan Williams Sr., had been used to pay for the care of Jane’s mad son Peter. Between 1763 and 1774, Franklin had spent £150 on repairs. More repairs must have been needed after the
British evacuated from
Boston, in 1776, but by 1778, the house was evidently being rented again, because that year, Jane asked Williams if the rent could be paid over to the
almshouse, to pay for Peter’s keep. That never came to pass; Peter died within the year. After the war, with Boston finally safe, Jane moved in, and Franklin decided to give her the house, writing to her that she should consider it her own, “And I hope you will be happy in it.”
²

She had never before lived so far from the center of town, but, knowing her brother’s opinions about exercise and fresh air, she thought this might be all to the good. “It is far from the few Relations & Acquaintance I have in Town but I Remember your sentamments are that walking is a most Healthfull Exercise and I practice it when I am able,” she wrote, “but am so weak I make but a Poor figure in the Street.”
³

As for her new home, she loved everything about it. “The House is Pleasant for Light and Air,” she reported, “haveing a large opening back & forward (as nobody has bulded near it since you saw it) and is very convenant
for our Small Famely which consists of my son & Daughter [
Peter Collas and Jane Mecom Collas] and Jenny Mecom.”
⁴
Built about 1715, the house had a gambrel roof and center stairs of heavy oak. There were two rooms on the first floor, a parlor and a kitchen, and on the second floor, one chamber facing the street, which Jane shared with Jenny, and another chamber in back, for the Collases.
⁵

Between the furniture left behind by Douse and used by previous tenants and some furniture brought by the Collases, there was plenty. Eight leather-bottomed chairs and a square mahogany dining table filled the front room, along with two stuffed-back easy chairs and a tea table. In Jane’s room, upstairs, were a bedstead, a cane-backed chair, a broken looking glass, five pictures (portraits of Franklin, probably, and
Badger’s portraits of Jenny and Josiah Flagg as children), and a desk, sized for a child. Her room is where she kept her
books.
⁶

There had been some difficulty in moving in, because in Cambridge, Peter Collas hadn’t paid his rent for two years, and his landlord had seized his furniture. Collas also asked his mother-in-law for money all the time. He was so much in and out of debt that finally Jane had asked him to turn the title to all of his goods over to her (suggesting just how much she had learned from dealing with Edward Mecom, decades before). “I thought it Absolutly nesesary to secure there nesesary furniture Least it should be Atached by some other creditor & got him to make it over to me,” she reported to her brother. Then she began lecturing Collas on
industry. “I at lenth tould him he had no Right to live without Labour any more than another man he was strong & Able & if he could not git to be master of a vesel he must go mate. He should not chose to do that Nither. I tould him the Expences of the Famely when he was at home were Doble to what they were when he was absent & that if I continued to spend as I now did I should have not for my own soport.”
⁷

She skimped and saved and soon had enough money to have the house decorated. By October she could write her brother, “I am now Pritily settled have had two Rooms New Papered an Painted, have Procurd some conveniances for my own Chamber (for you know I Lost allmost every thing when the Town was Ravged) that if I should be confined to it I might be comfortable for I cant say I ever feel Perfectly well.”
⁸
If she was going to die in that room, she wanted to like the wallpaper.

She loved to walk. She could walk to her church, the Second Church,
just a few blocks away, on Hanover Street. She loved to walk up Copp’s Hill. “I frequent go on the Hill for the sake of the Prospect & the walk,” she wrote. She loved to look at the river, where a bridge was being built, connecting Boston to Cambridge. “It is Realy a charming Place,” she wrote her brother, “they have Leveld the Riseing Ground that Led to it & Nicely Paved it, that at some Distance as you Aproach to it it is a Beautifull sight with a Litle Vilidg at the other End the Buildings all New the Prospect on Each side is Delightfull.” Once, she even walked all the way across the bridge and into Cambridge. The Charles is wide. Crossing by foot from Boston to Cambridge is a very long walk for a woman of seventy-four. “I sopose you wont allow it as grat a feeat as yr walking ten miles befor Breakfast,” she wrote her brother, “but I am strongly Inclined to Alow it my self, all circumstances considered.”
⁹

As she grew older, she worried, having witnessed so much insanity, that she might be losing her mind. Every time she forgot something, she fretted about dementia. She had always loved to read Swift, and she knew the story of how, in the years before he died, he went mad. “I am often Afflected with grat Dizenes & Expect or fear if I live much Longer to be in such Circumstances as Dean Swift was,” she wrote her brother on the Fourth of July 1784. “If it Pleases God to hear my Prayer Death will be much Preferable, but who am I to Prescribe to the Allmighty.” Franklin, who suffered from not only gout but also stones, was in considerable pain. She had heard of his illnesses, and wrote these words of comfort: “your Retaining your Intlectual Faculties & such Fortitude to bare up under it must be Preferable to a Senslis Stupidetie.”
¹⁰

Losing her wits worried her above all else. “The similarity of my Disorder with Dean Swifts makes me often very Apprehensive,” she wrote her brother. “I however Recreate my self in the best maner I can, I walk abroad often, viset my friends oftener than they do me hopeing they will Pay the debt in time of need.”
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