Book of Ages (38 page)

The winter of 1786–87 was, Jane said, a “most Intolarable hard Winter,” especially wearing for an old woman.
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Between October and March, she was hardly able to get out the door. “I do walk, some times in the House
but I don’t think of it offten anouf,” she admitted to Franklin.
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It snowed and snowed. “The Snow has been so Deep & we no man in the House that we might have been Buried Alive were it not for the care of some good Neibours who began to Dig us out before we were up in the morning,” Jane wrote her brother, “& cousen Williams came Puffing, & Sweating, as soon as it was Posable to see how we were & if we wanted any thing, but thank God we had no want of any thing Nesesary if we had been Shutt up a fortnight. Except milk.” Ever since Jane had moved to the house in the North End, Franklin had arranged for firewood to be delivered to her every winter. “It is impossible for me always to guess what you may want,” he told her, “and I hope therefore that you will never be shy in letting me know where I can help to make your Life more comfortable.”
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In January and February 1787, after Bowdoin sent an army of more than four thousand volunteer militia to suppress the rebellion, the Springfield arsenal was defended. On March 10, Franklin signed a proclamation on behalf of the state of Pennsylvania, pledging support for the capture of Shays and other leaders of the rebellion by offering rewards.
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That spring, Franklin was elected as a Pennsylvania delegate to a convention, to be convened in Philadelphia, to address the inadequacies of the
Articles of Confederation. At eighty-one, he was the oldest delegate in the convention, which was scheduled to begin on May 14, 1787.

“I wanted to tell you how much Pleasure I Injoy in the constant and lively mention made of you in the New papers, which makes you Apear to me Like a young man of Twenty-five,” Jane wrote him on May 22. But Franklin had been ailing. “I don’t see how this world can do without Him,” Jane wrote to Sally the next day. “If we had a few more Such men I should hope for beter Times but I fear they Die of faster than they come forward in the world.”
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Years before,
Abigail
Adams had asked her husband, John, to “remember the ladies.”
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Jane had, for her brother, on the eve of the
Constitutional Convention, a different request.
Remember war,
she urged him:

It was a nice twist on what must have been two of her favorite books of the Old Testament, Micah 4:3 (“they shall beate their swords into plowshares … neither shall they learne warre any more”) and Isaiah 5:18 (“Woe unto them that draw iniquitie with cords of vanitie, and sinne, as it were with a cart rope”).
I had Rather hear of the Swords being beat into Plow-Shares, & the Halters used for Cart Roops, if by that means we may be brought to live Peaceably with won a nother.

“I agree with you perfectly,” he wrote back.
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The Constitution of the United States is four sheets of parchment, each about the size of any eighteenth-century newspaper. It is a book of
law.

“We the People,” the first three words of the Preamble, are written in a flourishing hand, like the title of Jane’s “Book of Age’s.” On Monday, September 17, 1787, the Constitution was read out loud in a chamber on the first floor of Pennsylvania’s State House. Franklin had written a speech for the occasion. “I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them,” Franklin wrote. “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.” He and his sister both knew this: that people so often believe themselves to be right is no proof that they are. “Most men indeed as well as most sects in
Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error.” The only difference between the Church of Rome and the
Church of England, Franklin joked, is that the former is infallible while the latter is never in the wrong. Urging, therefore, humility, he closed, “Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.”
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He signed his name: “B. Franklin.”
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And then he went home. During the convention, the delegates had been sequestered. The first letter Franklin wrote after the convention adjourned, he wrote to Jane.

“You will see the Constitution we have propos’d in the Papers,” he told her. “The Forming of it so as to accomodate all the different Interests and Views was a difficult task and perhaps after all it may not be receiv’d with the same Unanimity in the different States, that the Convention have
given the Example of, in delivering it out for their Consideration. We have, however, done our best, and it must take its Chance.”
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It wasn’t over yet. The United States Constitution is one of the oldest written constitutions in the world and the first, anywhere, submitted to the people for their approval.
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As
James Madison explained, the Constitution is “of no more consequence than the paper on which it is written, unless it be stamped with the approbation of those to whom it is addressed … THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES.”
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But critics charged that it was so difficult to read that it amounted to a conspiracy against the understanding of a plain man. “A constitution ought to be, like a beacon, held up to the public eye, so as to be understood by every man,”
Patrick Henry argued. He believed that what was drafted in Philadelphia was “of such an intricate and complicated nature, that no man on this earth can know its real operation.”
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No one wondered whether any woman could read it.

Rhode Island, the only state to hold a popular referendum on the Constitution, rejected it. Elsewhere, in state ratifying conventions, the Constitution passed by only the narrowest of margins: 89 to 79 in
Virginia; 30 to 27 in
New York. The
Massachusetts convention ratified the Constitution by one of the narrowest votes of all: 187 to 168. “You Percive we have some quarilsome spirits against the constetution,” Jane wrote to her brother, “but it does not apear to be those of Superior Judgment.”
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He was worried about the coming winter. It had been so hot. It could get cold so quickly. Did she have enough firewood?

“I blame myself for not sooner desiring you to lay in your Winter’s Wood, and drawing upon me for it, as last year,” he apologized in that first letter he wrote after the Constitutional Convention. “But I have been so busy.”
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CHAPTER XXXVI

T
his Day my Dear Brother compleats his 84th year,” Jane wrote to Franklin on January 17, 1790. (They had lived through such a momentous century that the very calendar had changed, from the Julian to the Gregorian. In 1752, eleven days were added to the calendar, shifting Franklin’s date of birth from the sixth of January to the seventeenth.) She knew his birthday, but he didn’t know hers.

“I am as you sopose six years younger than you Are being Born on the 27th march 1712,” she informed him, adding, “but to Apearance in Every wons sight as much older.”
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Franklin had been ill, and in a great deal of pain, for some time. “May God mitigate your Pain & continue yr Patience yet many years,” Jane wrote him, “for who that Know & Love you can Bare the thoughts of Serviving you in this Gloomy world.”

He was no less worried about her than she was about him.

“You always tell me that you live comfortably,” he wrote to her, “but I sometimes suspect that you may be too unwilling to acquaint me with any of your Difficulties, from an Apprehension of giving me Pain. I wish you would let me know precisely your Situation that I may better proportion my Assistance to your Wants. Have you any Money at Interest, and what does it produce? Or do you do some kind of Business for a Living?”
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“I never mean to Decive you by Any thing I write but your Penetrating Eye Discovers the Smallest simton & the Remotest consequences,” she wrote back. “I do indeed Live comfortable, (but can not Indulge such a childish disposition as to be Runing to you with every complaint when I know it will give you Pain.)” She offered, then, by way of assurance, a full account of her daily life.

He also received word of her from Catharine Ray Greene. “Im now on a Viset to your good Sister who I find Very Comfortable, and as much Health as Can expeckt for a Person So far advanst,” Caty wrote Franklin from Boston. “We have had a real feast on you you may rejoice you was not between us as we might Posibly each took a Peice.”
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And yet, knowing how often, in the early and middle years of her life, his sister had not acquainted him with her troubles, he wrote to her pastor,
John Lathrop, to inquire. “I am glad my poor dear Sister has so good and kind a Nieghbour,” he began. But “I sometimes suspect she may be backward in acquainting me with Circumstances in which I might be more helpful to her. If any such should occur to your Observation, your mentioning them to me will be a Favour I shall be thankful for.”
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“Yours must be Esteemed a Glorious Life,” Jane wrote her brother. He had tried to take the measure of that life, by writing his history, but had left the work unfinished. Having written Part I in London and Part II while
in France, he had brought what pages he had back with him upon his return in 1785. In Philadelphia in 1788, he had revised Parts I and II and written Part III—more than one hundred pages, taking the story of his life up till about 1756.
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He never once mentioned it to his sister, at least in any letter that survives.

He did, however, tell other people about it. “I am recovering from a long-continued gout, and am diligently employed in writing the History of my Life,” he wrote to
Benjamin Vaughan in October 1788. In 1783, Vaughan had urged Franklin, in the strongest terms, to finish what he had
begun: “Sir, I
solicit
the history of your life.” It would contain, Vaughan believed, a history of the United States itself, as if in miniature. Moreover, he argued, “all that has happened to you is also connected with the detail of the manners and situation of
a rising
people; and in this respect I do not think that the writings of Caesar and Tacitus can be more interesting to a true judge of human nature and society.” And there was more: “These, Sir, are small reasons in my opinion, compared with the chance which your life will give for the forming of future great men; and in conjunction with your
Art of Virtue,
(which you design to publish) of improving the features of private character, and consequently of aiding all happiness both public and domestic.” Then, too: “Your Biography will not merely teach self-education, but the education of
a wise man;
and the wisest man will receive lights and improve his progress, by seeing detailed the conduct of another wise man. And why are weaker men to be deprived of such helps, when we see our race has been blundering on in the dark, almost without a guide in this particular, from the farthest trace of time. Shew then, Sir, how much is to be done,
both to sons and fathers;
and invite all wise men to become like yourself; and other men to become wise.” And for Vaughan, himself a radical, there was, finally, this: it “will shew that you are ashamed of no origin.”
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