The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (128 page)

But home was what supplied the deepest personal satisfaction. “I am now in the bosom of my family,” he wrote the Jays, “and find four new little prattlers who cling about the knees of their Grandpapa and afford me great pleasure.” Jonathan Shipley, who had opened
his
home and family to Franklin, inquired of his friend’s domestic circumstances. “They are at present as happy as I could wish them,” Franklin replied. “I am surrounded by my offspring, a dutiful and affectionate daughter in my house, with six grandchildren, the eldest of which [Benny] you have seen, who is now at a College in the next street, finishing the learned part of his education; the others promising, both for parts and good dispositions. What their conduct may be when they grow up and enter the important scenes of life, I shall not live to see, and I cannot
foresee. I
therefore enjoy among them the present hour, and leave the future to Providence.”

The proximity of his daughter and her children doubtless reminded Franklin of his two sons who were missing. He did not speak directly of William and Franky, but they almost certainly influenced his remarks to Jonathan Shipley about family life.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them,
stand,
as Watts says,
a broader mark for sorrow;
but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too. When we launch our little fleet of barques into the ocean, bound to different ports, we hope for each a prosperous voyage; but contrary winds, hidden shoals, storms, and enemies come in for a share in the disposition of events; and though these occasion a mixture of disappointment, yet, considering the risque where we can make no insurance, we should think our selves happy if some return with success.

Family was a form of immortality, but perhaps not the only form. Franklin explained to Shipley that though he fared as well as he had any right to expect at his age, he could not live much longer. “The course of nature must soon put a period to my present mode of existence.” What would come after? Franklin was intrigued to find out. “Having seen during a long life a good deal of this world, I feel a growing curiosity to be acquainted with some other.” He hoped not to be disappointed; rather,
with “filial confidence,” he resigned his spirit to “that great and good Parent of mankind who created it, and who has so graciously protected and prospered me from my birth to the present hour.”

George Whately had remarked on what remained at the end of a long life, and had sent an epitaph written by Pope, which included a line scoffing at worldly praise: “He ne’er cared a pin/What they said or may say of the mortal within.” Franklin was skeptical. “It is so natural to wish to be spoken well of, whether alive or dead, that I imagine he could not be quite exempt from that desire; and that he at least wished to be thought a wit, or he would not have given himself the trouble of writing so good an epitaph to leave behind him.”

For himself, Franklin said, he preferred the sentiment of a traditional drinking song entitled “The Old Man’s Wish,” which in successive verses asked for a warm house in a country town, an easy horse, good books, ingenious and cheerful companions, pudding on Sundays, stout ale, and a bottle of burgundy. Each verse ended:

May I govern my passions with an absolute sway,
Grow wiser and better as my strength wears away,
Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay.

“But what signifies our wishing?” Franklin asked. “Things happen, after all, as they will happen. I have sung that
Wishing Song
a thousand times when I was young, and now find, at fourscore, that the three contraries have befallen me, being subject to the gout and the stone, and being not yet master of all my passions—like the proud girl in my country who wished and resolved not to marry a parson, nor a Presbyterian, nor an Irishman, and at length found herself married to an Irish Presbyterian parson.”

At times Franklin approached a belief in reincarnation. Observing the “great frugality” of nature, which the Deity had designed so as to ensure that nothing once created was lost, Franklin supposed that something similar applied to souls. “When I see nothing annihilated, and not even a drop of water wasted, I cannot suspect the annihilation of souls, or believe that he will suffer the daily waste of millions of minds ready made that now exist, and put himself to the continual trouble of making new ones.” Franklin included his own soul in this conservation scheme. “Thus finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist; and with all the inconveniences human life is
liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine; hoping, however, that the
errata
of the last may be corrected.”

Franklin did not share this unorthodox view with everyone—and he counseled others to exercise similar caution. An author unidentified in the surviving correspondence, but quite possibly Thomas Paine, sent Franklin a manuscript challenging the basis of organized religion; Franklin told him not to publish. “Though your reasonings are subtle, and may prevail with some readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of mankind on that subject, and the consequence of printing this piece will be a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit to others. He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face.” Even if the manuscript succeeded in its purpose, what good would come? The author might be able to live a virtuous life without the aid of religion, but not everyone was so blessed. “Think how great a proportion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced and inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes
habitual.”
Usually a model of tact, Franklin now chose bluntness. “Burn this piece before it is seen by any other person, whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification from the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of regret and repentance. If men are so wicked as we now see them
with religion,
what would they be
if without it?”
(If the author of the manuscript
was
Paine, Franklin’s warning had some effect: Paine did not publish
The Age of Reason
for several years—to a reception very much like that Franklin forecast.)

Other advice was more positive. The young Noah Webster was busy formulating the declaration of lexicographical independence that would make his name synonymous with American dictionaries; on a visit to Philadelphia he shared his thoughts with Franklin, who resurrected his own ideas on a phonetic alphabet. The exchange fired Webster’s enthusiasm. “I am encouraged by the prospect of rendering my country some service, to proceed in my design of refining the language and improving our general system of education,” he wrote George Washington. “Dr. Franklin has extended my views to a very simple plan of reducing the language to perfect regularity.” Though the “perfect regularity” of Franklin’s phonetic scheme ultimately proved too radical for Webster, enough of the spirit of Franklin remained for Webster to dedicate his pioneering
Dissertations on the English Language
to Franklin.

During
his first several months back from France, Franklin spent more time than he wished tending to details that remained from his diplomatic mission. One detail seemed more than a detail to his critics, for it involved a missing million livres. Because of the irregular nature of French aid to the United States prior to the treaties of 1778—through the likes of Beaumarchais and the Farmers General—records of the transactions were incomplete and contradictory. Certain receipts from King Louis, signed by Franklin, registered grants to America of 3 million livres, but only 2 million appeared on the deposit accounts of the American government in its French bank. “I wonder how I came to sign the contract acknowledging three millions of gift, when in reality there was only two,” Franklin wrote Ferdinand Grand, America’s banker in Paris. “I most earnestly request of you to get this matter explained, that I may stand clear before I die, lest some enemy should afterwards accuse me of having received a million not accounted for.”

Unfortunately for Franklin’s peace of mind, Grand could not find the money either. Franklin guessed that the records had been buried for a reason. “I conjecture it must be money advanced for our use to M. de Beaumarchais,” he informed Congress, “and that it is a
mystère du cabinet,
which perhaps should not be further enquired into.” The whole business had been delicate for the French government, and evidently remained delicate. “It may well be supposed that if the Court furnished him with the means of supplying us, they may not be willing to furnish authentic proofs of such a transaction so early in our dispute with Britain.”

Franklin’s conjecture eventually proved correct. But the evidence—in the form of a receipt from Beaumarchais for the million—did not surface until after Franklin’s death, and in the meantime it complicated his efforts to settle his own account with Congress. An auditor engaged by Congress determined that Franklin was owed some 7,500 livres for his services in France. But between the continuing hostility of the Lee faction, which seized upon the missing money as evidence that Franklin had filled his own pocket, and the general tardiness of Congress in paying all its creditors, his balance remained unpaid.

He had better luck with Georgia. When that colony had engaged him to serve as its agent in London before the war, it promised him £100 per year. But the money was never paid, and with everything else that occurred
in the interim, he had never pursued the debt. Now he reminded the appropriate officials of the state of Georgia, who responded by offering him land, of which they had much, in lieu of cash, of which they had little. Georgia had awarded a handsome tract to Admiral d’Estaing, who had been severely wounded fighting for Savannah; Franklin wrote to d’Estaing describing his own settlement with Georgia: “The Assembly of that state has granted me 3,000 acres of their land to be located wherever I can find any vacant. I wish much that it might be near yours, for you contrived to make your neighbourhood so agreeable to me at Passy that I could wish to be your neighbour everywhere.”

Franklin did not worry excessively about his finances, partly because he did not expect to live long and partly because his fortunes had survived the war better than he had expected. “My own estate I find more than tripled in value since the Revolution,” he wrote Ferdinand Grand. This figure was misleading, in that the war had inflated prices across the economy. In this same letter Franklin explained that the high price of labor was causing him to defer some building plans he had devised. All the same, he had resources sufficient to maintain him even in the more comfortable style to which he had grown accustomed in France.

In time
he grew used to the higher cost of labor, and he determined to build. He tore down three old houses on lots he owned on Market Street and prepared to replace them with new ones. But before the construction commenced, a neighbor disputed a lot line, and litigation delayed the work. Because Franklin had already engaged the workmen and was obligated for their wages, he set them to building an addition to his own house, now too small for himself, Sally, Richard, and the grandchildren. “I propose to have in it a long room for my library and instruments, with two good bedchambers and two garrets,” he explained to Jane Mecom. “The library is to be even with the floor of my best old chamber, and the story under it will for the present be employed only to hold wood, but may be made into rooms hereafter.” He granted that this might not be the wisest use of resources. “I hardly know how to justify building a library at an age that will so soon oblige me to quit it.” But he aimed to indulge himself. “We are apt to forget that we are grown old, and building is an amusement.”