Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed Volume I Part 12

He was ingenious, could draw prettily, was skilled a little in music, and had a clear pleasing voice, so that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, as he sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius too, and, on occasion, was very handy in the use of other tradesman's tools; but his great excellence lay in a sound understanding and solid judgment in prudential matters, both in private and publick affairs. In the latter, indeed, he was never employed, the numerous family he had to educate and the straitness of his circ.u.mstances keeping him close to his trade; but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading people, who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the church he belonged to, and showed a good deal of respect for his judgment and advice: he was also much consulted by private persons about their affairs when any difficulty occurred, and frequently chosen an arbitrator between contending parties. At his table he liked to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or neighbour to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life; and little or no notice was ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table, whether it was well or ill-dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavour, preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind, so that I was bro't up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so un.o.bservant of it, that to this day if I am asked I can scarce tell a few hours after dinner what I dined upon. This has been a convenience to me in travelling, where my companions have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate, because better instructed, tastes and appet.i.tes.

A story is credited to Josiah by Franklin which is quite in the manner of the son. When Charles the First ordered his proclamation authorizing sports on Sunday to be read in all churches, many clergymen complied, some refused and others hurried it through as indistinctly as possible. But a certain clergyman to the surprise of his congregation read it distinctly. He followed the reading, however, with the Fourth Commandment, _Remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day_, and then said, "Brethren, I have laid before you the Command of your King, and the Commandment of your G.o.d. I leave it to yourselves to judge which of the two ought rather to be observed."

It is to be wished that Franklin could have given us in the _Autobiography_ a companion portrait of his mother also; but this he has not done. He tells us little more than that she was the daughter of Peter Folger, a resident of Nantucket, had, like her husband, an excellent const.i.tution, and suckled all her ten children--a point of capital importance with her son. Franklin further tells us that he never knew either his father or his mother to have any sickness but that of which they died, he at eighty-nine and she at eighty-five. They were both buried in Boston, and rested for many years under a monument, erected over their graves by Franklin, with a happy inscription from his pen, until this monument, having fallen into a state of dilapidation, was replaced in 1827 by a more durable one, erected by a number of citizens of Boston, who were desirous, as their supplementary inscription states, of reminding succeeding generations that he was born in Boston. In his inscription, Franklin, true to his ideals, states with pride that Josiah and Abiah lived lovingly together in wedlock fifty-five years, and, without an estate, or any gainful employment, by constant labor and industry, with G.o.d's blessing, maintained a large family comfortably, and brought up thirteen children and seven grandchildren reputably. In the light of the altered domestic standards of the present time, it requires some little effort, after reading these words, to accept the subsequent statement in the inscription that Josiah was not only a pious but a "prudent" man.

Peter Folger was evidently regarded by Franklin with distinct favor because of his tolerant characteristics. The flower of tolerance did not often lift up its head in the frigid air of what some one has wittily styled the "ice age" of New England history. In the _Autobiography_, Franklin speaks of Folger as one of the first settlers of New England, of whom honourable mention is made by Cotton Mather, in his church history of that country, ent.i.tled _Magnolia Christi Americana_, as "_a G.o.dly, learned Englishman_,"

if he remembers the words rightly.

I have heard [the _Autobiography_ goes on] that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of them was printed, which I saw now many years since. It was written in 1675, in the home-spun verse of that time and people, and addressed to those then concerned in the government there. It was in favour of liberty of conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries that had been under persecution, ascribing the Indian Wars, and other distresses that had befallen the country, to that persecution, as so many judgments of G.o.d to punish so heinous an offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole appeared to me as written with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember, though I have forgotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of them was, that his censures proceeded from good-will, and, therefore, he would be known to be the author,

"Because to be a libeller (says he) I hate it with my heart; From Sherburne town, where now I dwell, My name I do put here; Without offense your real friend, It is Peter Folgier."

Verses like these, it is to be feared, call for somewhat the same spirit of toleration as that which Folger himself exhibited towards the Baptists and Quakers, but they were well worthy of remembrance, at any rate, for the brave and enlightened spirit by which they were informed.[25]

Peter Folger's plainness of speech seems to have been a family characteristic. In a letter to his sister Jane, written in his last years, Franklin told her frankly that, if there had been a misunderstanding between her and one of her relations, he should have concluded that it was her fault, "for I think our Family," he said, "were always subject to being a little Miffy." Then, as was his habit, when he had discharged the disagreeable duty of saying something slightly censorious, he brings the stress of his good nature to bear upon his pen just a little harder than usual.

By the way [he asked] is our Relationship in Nantucket worn-out? I have met with none from thence of late years, who were disposed to be acquainted with me, except Captain Timothy Foulger. They are wonderfully shy. But I admire their honest plainness of Speech.

About a year ago I invited two of them to dine with me.

Their answer was, that they would, if they could not do better. I suppose they did better; for I never saw them afterwards, and so had no Opportunity of showing my Miff, if I had one.

The letters from Franklin to his father and mother are few in number but not lacking in interest. To the one to Josiah, in which he made the heinous confession that his mind was not very clear as to the difference between Arianism and Arminianism, we have already adverted. In this letter, besides the burden of defending his religious orthodoxy before a very stern tribunal, he had to a.s.sume the burden of satisfying his good mother that there was nothing odious in the principles and practices of the Freemasons; and this in the face of the fact that one of their rules was not to admit women into their lodges. Another letter, which begins "Honoured Father and Mother," and ends, "Your affectionate and dutiful son," discourses in quite a learned fashion upon various remedies that might take the place of the ebbing _vis medicatrix naturae_ which had served the aged pair so well for such a long span of years; but the son is careful to say that he hopes that his parents will consider his advice upon such subjects only as marks of his good will and put no more of it in practice than should happen to agree with their doctor's directions. Another letter, beginning "Honoured Mother," deals with topics of a very different nature from either religious dogmas or the _sapo philosophorum_ of his medicinal communication. Cousin Josiah Davenport and his spouse had arrived at Philadelphia hearty and well. He had met them the evening before at Trenton, thirty miles off, and had accompanied them to town. How gracious, we may remark, was the old Pennsylvania hospitality which sometimes greeted the coming guest thirty miles away, and, instead of speeding the parting guest, sometimes followed him for as great a distance when he was going!

They [Franklin continued] went into their own house on Monday, and I believe will do very well, for he seems bent on industry, and she appears a discreet, notable young woman. My wife has been to see them every day, calling in as she pa.s.ses by; and I suspect has fallen in love with our new cousin; for she entertains me a deal, when she comes home, with what Cousin Sally does, and what Cousin Sally says, what a good contriver she is, and the like.

In his next letter to Abiah, Franklin sends her one of his far-famed almanacs, and then adds, "I send you also a moidore enclosed, which please to accept towards chaise hire, that you may ride warm to meetings this winter." From the moidore he pa.s.ses to infantile complaints which it must have pained the heart of the mother of ten children to hear had carried off many children in Philadelphia that summer, and then, after just a word about Cousin Coleman and two of the outspoken Folgers, he has this to say about Sally: "Your granddaughter is the greatest lover of her book and school, of any child I ever knew, and is very dutiful to her mistress as well as to us."

In one of her letters to her son Abiah tells him that she is very weak and short-breathed, so that she can't sit up to write much, although she sleeps well at night, and her cough is better, and she has a pretty good stomach to her victuals. In the same letter, she also says: "Pray excuse my bad writing and inditing, for all tell me I am too old to write letters." No courtier could have framed a more graceful response to this appeal, let alone the sincerity of filial respect and love.

We received your kind Letter of the 2d Instant [wrote Franklin] and we are glad to hear you still enjoy such a Measure of Health, notwithstanding your great Age. We read your Writing very easily. I never met with a Word in your Letters but what I could readily understand; for, tho' the Hand is not always the best, the Sense makes everything plain.

The numerous family details in this letter render it the most interesting of Franklin's letters to his mother. They had concluded, he said, to sell at the first good opportunity a negro slave and his wife, who appear to have been guilty of some thievery, "for we do not like Negro Servants," he declared. For the sake of human consistency, it is to be hoped that the pair were sold long before he became the President of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and a.s.sailed the African slave trade with such telling raillery. But, to sell all one's own negroes, and then to enter upon a perfervid course of agitation for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of one's neighbor's negroes, without compensation, was a thing of not uncommon occurrence in American history, so long as the inst.i.tution of slavery lasted. Will (William Franklin), he tells Abiah, had acquired a habit of idleness on the expedition against Canada, but had begun of late to apply himself to business, and he hoped would become an industrious man. "He imagin'd his Father," said Franklin, "had got enough for him, but I have a.s.sured him that I intend to spend what little I have myself, if it please G.o.d that I live long enough; and, as he by no means wants Sense, he can see by my going on, that I am like to be as good as my Word."

Sally [he says] grows a fine Girl, and is extremely industrious with her Needle, and delights in her Book.

She is of a most affectionate Temper, and perfectly dutiful and obliging to her Parents, and to all.

Perhaps I flatter myself too much, but I have Hopes that she will prove an ingenious, sensible, notable, and worthy Woman, like her Aunt Jenny. She goes now to the Dancing-School.

After Franklin decamped from Boston as a boy, he rarely again saw his parents, but, down to the days of their respective deaths, he kept in touch with them immediately, through his own correspondence with them, and also mediately through his correspondence with his sister Jane. "You have mentioned nothing in your letter of our dear parents," he observes in one of his letters to her. "Dear Sister, I love you tenderly for your care of our father in his sickness," he writes to her on another occasion. And, finally, when Abiah, "home had gone and ta'en her wages," he sent these feeling words to this same sister and her husband:

Dear Brother and Sister, I received yours with the affecting news of our dear good mother's death. I thank you for your long continued care of her in her old age and sickness. Our distance made it impracticable for us to attend her, but you have supplied all. She has lived a good life, as well as a long one, and is happy.

Josiah left an estate valued at twenty-four hundred dollars. Some years after his death, when Franklin happened to be in Boston, an old man produced a bond, executed by the father for about fifteen or seventeen pounds, and asked the son to pay it. This Franklin declined to do, taking the position that, as he had never received any share of his father's estate, he did not think himself obliged to pay any of the debts due by it.

Another reason, as he afterwards stated in a letter to his sister Jane, in which the incident was mentioned, was that he considered the matter one rather for the attention of his brother John, the administrator of his father, than himself. But, in this same letter, nevertheless, he sent these instructions to Jane: "If you know that Person, I wish you would now, out of Hall's Money (a sum that was to be collected for him and to be given to her) pay that Debt; for I remember his Mildness on the Occasion with some Regard." A soft answer, we know, tends to turn away wrath, but it is not often, we imagine, that mildness proves such an effective policy for the collection of a stale debt.

"Dear kindred blood! How I do love you all!" the exclamation of Daniel Webster, might as well have issued from the great, loving heart of Franklin. Like the brethren of Joseph, the son of Jacob, pretty much all of his contemporary relations came to share in one way or another in the good fortune of the only prosperous member of the family. Franklin was too young to have ever met the two brothers of his father, who lived and died in England--John, the Banbury dyer, with whom Franklin's paternal grandfather, Thomas resided in his old age, and with whom Franklin's father served an apprenticeship, and Thomas, the Ecton forerunner of Franklin himself, whom we have already mentioned. But his paternal uncle, Benjamin, who followed Franklin's father to New England, and lived in the same house with him for some years, Franklin did know, and brings before us quite clearly in the _Autobiography_. He was bred a silk dyer in England, was an ingenious and very pious man, we are a.s.sured by his nephew, and died at a great age. It was to the warm affection that existed between this uncle, whose grandson, Samuel Franklin, was one of Franklin's correspondents, and Franklin's father that Franklin owed his Christian name. Besides being a dyer, a great attender of sermons of the best preachers, "which he took down in his shorthand," he was, the _Autobiography_ states, a poet, and "also much of a politician; too much, perhaps, for his station."

In his agreeable life of Franklin, Parton has this to say of the uncle's poetry books.

The poetry books of Uncle Benjamin, which are still in perfect preservation, though it is a hundred and eighty years since he bought the first of them, are neatly written and carefully indexed. Many of the pieces are acrostics, and several are curiously shaped on the page-dwindling or expanding in various forms, according to the quaint fancy of the poet.

No true poet, of course, ever had the patience to index his poems, and the best that can be said of the uncle as a poet is that, though he did not reach even the lowest slopes of Parna.s.sus, he attained a point distinctly nearer to its base than the nephew ever did. Every family event seems to have been a peg for him to hang a verse upon, and among his lines are these sent across the Atlantic in return for something from the pen of his nephew who was at that time about seven years of age:

"'Tis time for me to throw aside my pen, When hanging sleeves read, write, and rhyme like men, This forward spring foretells a plenteous crop; For, if the bud bear grain, what will the top!

If plenty in the verdant blade appear, What may we not soon hope for in the ear!

When flowers are beautiful before they're blown, What rarities will afterward be shown."

The uncle was living in New England when Josiah, Franklin's brother, who had run away to sea, and who had not been heard from for nine years, turned up again in Boston. That was a domestic event of entirely too much importance to be unsung by an uncle at once pious and poetical. So, after some vigorous references to the Deity, who

"Stills the storm and does a.s.swage Proud Dreadfull seas Death-Threatning Rage,"

the honest poet breaks out into this invocation in which he had every right to believe that the long-lost Josiah would heartily join:

"O Let men praise this mighty Lord, And all his Wondrous Works Record; Let all the Sons of men, before Whose Eyes those Works are Done, Adore."

But his rhymes appear to have fallen upon an ear deaf to the appeals of both piety and poetry, for one of the poet's poetry books contains this resentful entry:

"The Third part of the 107 psalm, Which Follows Next, I composed to sing at First meeting with my Nephew Josiah Franklin, But being unaffected with G.o.ds Great Goodn's: In his many preservations and Deliverances, It was coldly Entertain'd."

The extent to which his uncle Benjamin had been a politician in England was brought home to Franklin by a curious incident when he was in London. A second-hand book dealer, who knew nothing of the relationship between the two, offered to sell him a collection of pamphlets, bound in eight volumes folio, and twenty-four volumes, quarto and octavo, and containing all the princ.i.p.al pamphlets and papers on political topics, printed in England from the Restoration down to the year 1715. On examining them, Franklin was satisfied from the handwriting of the tables of contents, memoranda of prices and marginal notes in them, as well as from other circ.u.mstances, that his Uncle Benjamin was the collector, and he bought them. In all probability, they had been sold by the uncle, when he emigrated from England to New England more than fifty years before.

The _Autobiography_ does not mention the fact that Franklin had at least one aunt on the paternal side, but he had. In a letter in the year 1767 to Samuel Franklin, the grandson of his Uncle Benjamin, after stating that there were at that time but two of their relations bearing the name of Franklin living in England, namely, Thomas Franklin, of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, a dyer, and his daughter, Sally, Franklin a.s.serts that there were besides still living in England Eleanor Morris, an old maiden lady, the daughter of Hannah, the sister of Franklin's father, and Hannah Walker, the granddaughter of John, the brother of Franklin's father, and her three sons. No Arab was ever made happier by the reception of a guest than was Franklin by the discovery of a new Franklin. In 1781, when a lady at Konigsberg, who was the granddaughter of a John Franklin, communicated to him certain facts about her family history, he replied in terms that left her no footing for a claim of relationship, but added affably, "It would be a Pleasure to me to Discover a Relation in Europe, possessing the amiable Sentiments express'd in your Letter. I a.s.sure you I should not disown the meanest." One of the statements of this letter was that he had exact accounts of every person of his family since the year 1555, when it was established in England. Such a thing as sensitiveness to his humble origin or the social obscurity of his kinsfolk could find no lodgment in a mind so capacious, a heart so kind, or a nature so full of manly self-respect as his. To say nothing more, he was too much of a philosopher not to realize how close even the high-born n.o.bleman, when detached from privilege and social superst.i.tion, is to the forked radish, to which elemental man has been likened. It is true that he once wrote to his sister Jane that he would not have her son Peter put the Franklin arms on soap of his making, and this has been cited as evidence that even Franklin had his petty modic.u.m of social pride. The imputation overlooks the reason that he gave, namely, that to use the Franklin coat of arms for such a purpose would look too much like an attempt to counterfeit the soap formerly made by Peter's uncle John. It was Franklin's true pride of character that disarmed the social arrogance which might otherwise have rendered him less triumphantly successful than he was in winning his way into the favor of the most accomplished men, and the most beautiful and elegant women, in France.

With regard to his generous conduct to his brother James we have already spoken. Of Jemmy, James' son, who became Franklin's apprentice at James'

request, we have a view in a letter from Franklin to his sister Jane in which he uses Jemmy as an ill.u.s.tration of how unreasonably her son Benny, when Mr. Parker's apprentice, might have complained of the clothes furnished to him by his master.

I never knew an apprentice [he said] contented with the clothes allowed him by his master, let them be what they would. Jemmy Franklin, when with me, was always dissatisfied and grumbling. When I was last in Boston, his aunt bid him go to a shop and please himself, which the gentleman did, and bought a suit of clothes on my account dearer by one half than any I ever afforded myself, one suit excepted; which I don't mention by way of complaint of Jemmy, for he and I are good friends, but only to show you the nature of boys.

What a good friend he proved to Jemmy, when the latter became his own master, we have seen. The _erratum_ of which Franklin was guilty in his relations to his brother James was fully corrected long before he left a will behind him conferring upon James' descendants the same measure of his remembrance as that conferred by him upon the descendants of his brother Samuel and his sisters.

Four of Franklin's brothers died young, and Josiah, his sea faring brother, perished at sea not long after he excited the dudgeon of his uncle Benjamin by his indifference to his uncle's line of thanksgiving.

As long as Franklin's brothers John and Peter were engaged, as their father had been, in the business of making soap and candles, Franklin a.s.sisted them by obtaining consignments of their wares from them, and advertising these wares in his newspaper, and selling them in his shop. Later, when he became Deputy Postmaster-General of the Colonies, he made John postmaster at Boston and Peter postmaster at Philadelphia. Referring to a visit that he paid to John at Newport, Franklin says in the _Autobiography_, "He received me very affectionately, for he always lov'd me." When John died in 1756 at the age of sixty-five, some years after his brother Benjamin had thoughtfully devised a special catheter for his use, the latter wrote to his sister Jane, "I condole with you on the loss of our dear brother. As our number grows less, let us love one another proportionably more."

John's widow he made postmistress at Boston in her husband's place.

Peter Franklin died in 1766 in the seventy-fourth year of his age. As soon as the news of Peter's death reached Franklin in London, he wrote a most feeling letter to Peter's widow, Mary.

It has pleased G.o.d at length [he said] to take from us my only remaining Brother, and your affectionate Husband, with whom you have lived in uninterrupted Harmony and Love near half a Century.

Considering the many Dangers & Hardships his Way of Life led him into, and the Weakness of his Const.i.tution, it is wonderful that he lasted so long.

It was G.o.d's Goodness that spared him to us. Let us, instead of repining at what we have lost, be thankful for what we have enjoyed.

He then proceeds, in order to allay the widow's fears as to her future, to tell her that he proposes to set up a printing house for her adopted son to be carried on in partnership with her, and to further encourage this son if he managed well.[26]

Of Franklin's brother Samuel, we know but little.

Franklin's oldest sister, Elizabeth Dowse, the wife of Captain Dowse, lived to a very great age, and fell into a state of extreme poverty. When he was consulted by her relations in New England as to whether it was not best for her to give up the house in which she was living, and to sell her personal effects, he sent a reply full of wise kindness.

As _having their own way_ is one of the greatest comforts of life to old people [he said], I think their friends should endeavour to accommodate them in that, as well as in anything else. When they have long lived in a house, it becomes natural to them; they are almost as closely connected with it, as the tortoise with his sh.e.l.l; they die, if you tear them out of it; old folks and old trees, if you remove them, it is ten to one that you kill them; so let our good old sister be no more importuned on that head. We are growing old fast ourselves, and shall expect the same kind of indulgences; if we give them, we shall have a right to receive them in our turn.

And as to her few fine things, I think she is in the right not to sell them, and for the reason she gives, that they will fetch but little; and when that little is spent, they would be of no further use to her; but perhaps the expectation of possessing them at her death may make that person tender and careful of her, and helpful to her to the amount of ten times their value.