Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed Volume I Part 29

To prove that I do not love you, my good Papa, you compare yourself to a beggar who asked alms from a bishop. Now, the role of a bishop is not to refuse to give to beggars when they are really in want; he honors himself in doing good. But in truth the kind of charity which you ask of me so amusingly can be found everywhere. You will not grow thin because of my refusals! What would you think of your beggar, if, the bishop having given him the "louis" which he asked, he had grumbled because he did not get two? That, however, is your case, my good friend.

You adopted me as your daughter, I chose you for my father: what do you expect of me? Friendship! Well, I love you as a daughter should love her father. The purest, the most respectful, the tenderest affection for you fills my soul; you asked me for a "louis"; I gave it to you, and yet you murmur at not getting another one, which does not belong to me. It is a treasure which has been entrusted to me, my good Papa; I guard it and will always guard it carefully. Even if you were like "Colin sick," in truth I could not cure you; and nevertheless, whatever you may think or say, no one in this world loves you more than I.

In this letter she puts him off with the teasing a.s.surance of friendship.

In another, written from Ma.r.s.eilles, it is with other charming women that she mocks him:

I received on my arrival here, my good Papa, your letter of October 1st. It has given me keen pleasure; I found in it evidences of your friendship and a tinge of that gayety and gallantry which make all women love you, because you love them all. Your proposition to carry me on your wings, if you were the angel Gabriel, made me laugh; but I would not accept it, although I am no longer very young nor a virgin. That angel was a sly fellow and your nature united to his would become too dangerous. I should be afraid of miracles happening, and miracles between women and angels might well not always bring a redeemer....

I have arranged, my good friend, to write alternately to my "great neighbor" and to you; the one to whom I shall not have written will kindly tell the other that I love him with all my heart, and when your turn comes you will add an embrace for the good wife of our neighbor, for her daughter, for little Mother Caillot, for all the gentle and pretty women of my acquaintance whom you may meet. You see that not being able to amuse you, either by my singing or by chess, I seek to procure you other pleasures. If you had been at Avignon with us, it is there you would have wished to embrace people. The women there are charming; I thought of you every time I saw one of them. Adieu, my good Papa; I do not relate to you the details of my journey, as I have written of them to our neighbor, who will communicate them to you. I limit myself to a.s.suring you of the most constant and the tenderest friendship on my part.

At times the pursuer is too badly afflicted with gout in his legs to maintain the pursuit, and the pursued has to come to his a.s.sistance to keep the flirtation going:

How are you, my good Papa? Never has it cost me so much to leave you; every evening it seems to me that you would be very glad to see me, and every evening I think of you. On Monday, the 21st, I shall go to meet you again; I hope that you will then be very firm on your feet, and that the teas of Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day, and that of Sunday morning, will regain all their brilliance. I will bring you _la bonne eveque_. My fat husband will make you laugh, our children will laugh together, our great neighbor will quiz, the Abbes La Roche and Morellet will eat all the b.u.t.ter, Mme. Grand, her amiable niece, and M. Grand will help the company out, Pere Pagin will play _G.o.d of Love_ on his violin, I the march on the Piano, and you _Pet.i.ts Oiseaux_ on the armonica.

O! my friend, let us see in the future fine and strong legs for you, and think no more of the bad one that has persecuted you so much. After what is bad, one enjoys what is good more; life is sown with both, which she changes unceasingly. What she cannot keep from being equal and uniform is my tenderness for you, that time, place, and events will never alter.

My mother and all my family wish to be remembered to you.

I have had some news of you through our neighbor, but I must absolutely have some from you.

Amusingly enough, M. Brillon contributes his part to the restoration of the gouty legs to something like normal activity.

The visits of your good husband during my sickness [wrote Franklin to Madame Brillon] have been very agreeable to me. His conversation has eased and enlivened me. I regret that, instead of seeking it when I have been at your home, I have lost so much time in playing chess. He has many stories and always applies them well. If he has despoiled you of some, you can repeat them all the same, for they will always please me, coming from your mouth.

There is another letter from Madame Brillon to Franklin which drew a reply from him, in which he ascended into the Christian heaven with almost as much literary facility as marked his entrance into the Pagan Elysium. Her letter was written during an absence from home:

Here I am reduced to writing to you, my good Papa, and to telling you that I love you. It was sweeter no doubt to let you see it in my eyes. How am I going to spend the Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days? No teas, no chess, no music, no hope of seeing or embracing my good papa! It seems to me that the privation which I experience from your absence would suffice to make me change my views, were I inclined to materialism.

Happiness is so uncertain, so full of crosses, that the deep conviction that we shall be happier in another life can alone tide us over the trials of this one. In Paradise we shall be reunited, never to leave each other again! We shall there live on roasted apples only; the music will be made up of Scotch airs; all parties will be given over to chess, so that no one may be disappointed; every one will speak the same language; the English will be neither unjust nor wicked there; the women will not be coquettes, the men will be neither jealous nor too gallant; "King John" will be left to eat his apples in peace; perhaps he will be decent enough to offer some to his neighbors--who knows? since we shall want for nothing in paradise! We shall never suffer from gout or nervous troubles there.

Mr. Mesmer will content himself with playing on the armonica, without wearying us with the electric fluid; ambition, envy, sn.o.bbery, jealousy, prejudice, all these will vanish at the sound of the trumpet. A lasting, sweet and peaceful friendship will animate every gathering. Every day we shall love one another, in order that we may love one another still more the day after; in a word, we shall be completely happy. In the meantime, let us get all the good we can out of this poor world of ours. I am far from you, my good Papa; I look forward to the time of our meeting, and I am pleased to think that your regrets and desires equal mine.

My mother and my children send you a thousand tender messages of respect; we should all like to have you here. May I venture to ask you to remember us to your grandson?

And this was the deft reply of Franklin which has come down to us in French corrected by Madame Brillon's hand:

Since you have a.s.sured me that we shall meet each other again, and shall recognize each other, in Paradise, I have reflected continually on our arrangements in that country; for I have great confidence in your a.s.surances, and I believe implicitly what you believe.

Probably more than forty years will pa.s.s away, after my arrival there, before you will follow me. I fear a little that, in the course of such a long time, you may forget me; that is why I have had thoughts of proposing to you that you give me your word that you will not renew your contract with M. Brillon. I would give you mine at the same time to wait for you, but this monsieur is so good, so generous to us--he loves you--and we him--so well--that I can not think of this proposition without some scruples of conscience--however the idea of an eternity, in which I should not be more favored than to be allowed to kiss your hands, or your cheeks occasionally, and to pa.s.s two or three hours in your sweet society at Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day evening parties, is frightful. In fine, I can not make that proposal, but since, like all who know you, I desire to see you happy in every respect, we may agree to say nothing more about it at this time, and to leave you at liberty to decide, when we are all together again: there to determine the question as you deem best for your happiness and ours; but, determine it as you will, I feel that I shall love you eternally.

Should you reject me, perhaps, I shall pay my addresses to Madame D'Hardancourt (the mother of Madame Brillon), who might be glad to keep house for me. In that event I should pa.s.s my domestic hours agreeably with her; and I should be better prepared to see you. I should have enough time in those forty years there to practise on the armonica, and, perhaps, I should play well enough to be worthy to accompany your pianoforte. We should have little concerts from time to time, good father Pagin would be of the company, your neighbor and his dear family [M. Jupin], M. de Chaumont, M. B., M.

Jourdan, M. Grammont, Madame du Tartre, the little mother, and some other select friends will be our audience, and the dear, good girls, accompanied by some other young angels, whose portraits you have already given me, will sing hallelujahs with us; we shall eat together apples of Paradise, roasted with b.u.t.ter and nutmeg; and we shall pity them who are not dead.

In another letter, he complains that she shuts him out from everything except a few civil and polite kisses such as she might give to some of her small cousins.

All this, however, was but preliminary to the treaty, which the signer of the Treaty of Alliance between France and the United States formally submitted to her in this letter.

Among the articles of this treaty were to be these:

Article 6. And the said Mr. F. on his part stipulates and covenants that he is to call at the home of M'de B.

as often as he pleases.

Article 7. That he is to remain there as long as he pleases.

Article 8. And that when he is with her, he is to do what he pleases.

He did not have much hope, he said, of obtaining her consent to the eighth article.

In another letter, the aged lover tells Madame Brillon that she must not accuse others of being responsible for his having left her half an hour sooner than usual. The truth was that he was very much fatigued for special reasons that he mentions, and thought it more decent to leave her than to fall asleep, which he was beginning to do on a bench in her garden after her descent into it. After all a half-hour with an old man, who could not make the best use of it, was a thing of very little importance. Sat.u.r.day evening, he would remain with her until she wished him to go, and, in spite of her usual polite phrases, he would know the time by her refusal to give him a little kiss.

With another note, he sent to Madame Brillon his Essay on the Morals of Chess. It was only proper that it should be dedicated to her, he said, as its good advice was copied from her generous and magnanimous way of playing the game. In the same letter, he stated that his grandson had inspected the house that she had urged him to apply for, but, true still to his adopted character, he said, "He finds it too magnificent for simple Republicans."

In another letter, he told Madame Brillon that he loved to live, because it seemed to him that there was much more pleasure than pain in existence. We should not blame Providence rashly. She should reflect how many even of our duties it had made pleasures, and that it had been good enough, moreover, to call several pleasures sins to enhance our enjoyment of them.

One more letter from Madame Brillon and we shall let her retire from the chess-board with the credit of having proved herself fully a match for Franklin in the longest and most absorbing game of chess that he played in France:

25th of December at Nice.

The atonement is adequate, my dear Papa. I shall no longer call you _Monseigneur_ nor even _Monsieur_. My pet.i.tion succeeded before reaching you; our tears are dried. You love us, you tell us so; you are in good health, and are as roguish as ever, since you are planning to steal me from Brillon, and to take me on a trip to America without letting anyone know it.

Everything is as usual. I recognize your fine mask, and I am wholly satisfied. But, my good Papa, why say that you write French badly,--that your pleasantries in that language are only nonsense? To make an academic discourse, one must be a good grammarian; but to write to our friends all we need is a heart, and you combine with the best heart, my lovable Papa, when you wish, the soundest ethics, a lively imagination, and that roguishness, so pleasant, which shows that the wisest man in the world allows his wisdom to be perpetually broken against the rocks of femininity. Write to me, therefore, write to me often and much, or from spite I shall learn English. I should want to know it quickly, and that would hurt me as I have been forbidden all study, and you would be the cause of my ills, for having refused me a few lines of your bad French, which my family and I--and we are not simpletons--consider very good; ask my neighbors, M. d'Estaing, Mme.

Helvetius and her abbes, if it would be right for you to prejudice the improvement which the sun here has caused in my health, for the sake of a little _amour propre_ which is beneath My Lord the Amba.s.sador, Benjamin Franklin.

One more letter from Franklin, and we shall cease to walk upon eggs. The French drapery is gone and nothing is left but Saxon nudity:

I am charm'd with the goodness of my spiritual guide, and resign myself implicitly to her Conduct, as she promises to lead me to heaven in so delicious a Road when I could be content to travel thither even in the roughest of all ways with the pleasure of her company.

How kindly partial to her Penitent in finding him, on examining his conscience, guilty of only one capital sin and to call that by the gentle name of Foible!

I lay fast hold of your promise to absolve me of all Sins past, present, & future, on the easy & pleasing Condition of loving G.o.d, America and my guide above all things. I am in rapture when I think of being absolv'd of the future.

People commonly speak of Ten Commandments.--I have been taught that there are twelve. The first was increase & multiply & replenish the earth. The twelfth is, A new Commandment I give unto you, _that you love one another_. It seems to me that they are a little misplaced, And that the last should have been the first. However I never made any difficulty about that, but was always willing to obey them both whenever I had an opportunity. Pray tell me dear Casuist, whether my keeping religiously these two commandments tho' not in the Decalogue, may not be accepted in Compensation for my breaking so often one of the ten, I mean that which forbids coveting my neighbour's wife, and which I confess I break constantly G.o.d forgive me, as often as I see or think of my lovely Confessor, and I am afraid I should never be able to repent of the Sin even if I had the full Possession of her.

And now I am Consulting you upon a Case of Conscience I will mention the Opinion of a certain Father of the church which I find myself willing to adopt though I am not sure it is orthodox. It is this, that the most effectual way to get rid of a certain Temptation is, as often as it returns, to comply with and satisfy it.

Pray instruct me how far I may venture to practice upon this Principle?

But why should I be so scrupulous when you have promised to absolve me of the future?

Adieu my charming Conductress and believe me ever with the sincerest Esteem & affection.

Your most obed't hum. Serv.

B F

It would be easy enough to treat this correspondence too seriously. When we recall the social sympathies and diversions which drew the parties to it together, the advanced age of Franklin, the friendly relations sustained by him to all the members of the Brillon household, his attempt to bring about a matrimonial union between Temple Franklin and the daughter of Madame Brillon, the good-humored complaisance of M. Brillon, the usages of Parisian society at that time, the instinctive ease with which Franklin adopted the tone of any land in which he happened to be, and the sportive grace and freedom, brought by his wit and literary dexterity to every situation that invited their exercise, we might well infer that, perhaps, after all, on his part, as well on that of the clever coquette, whose bodkin was quite as keen as his sword, it was understood that the _liaison_ was to be only a paper one--an encounter of wit rather than of love. From first to last, the att.i.tude of Madame Brillon towards Franklin was simply that of a beautiful and brilliant woman, to whom coquetry was an art, and whose intellectual activity had been stimulated, and vanity gratified, by the homage of a brilliant, magnetic and famous man, who possessed to a remarkable degree the faculty of rendering his splendid intellectual powers subservient to purely social uses. It was no slight thing to a woman such as Madame Brillon to be the _Vainqueur du Vainqueur de la Terre_, and little less than this did all France at that time insist that Franklin was.

There is nothing in her letters to Franklin to indicate that she ever really had any thought of allowing him any greater degree of intimacy with her than he actually enjoyed. On that point she was apparently as firm as she was in her courteous and kindly but inflexible opposition to a marriage between her daughter and William Temple Franklin.

I despise slanderers [she wrote to Franklin on one occasion], and am at peace with myself, but that is not enough, one must submit to what is called _propriety_ (that word varies in each century in each country) to sit less often on your knees. I shall certainly love you none the less, nor will our hearts be more or less pure; but we shall close the mouth of the malicious, and it is no slight thing even for the sage to silence them.

On the other hand there is much to support the idea that the motive at the back of Franklin's letters to Madame Brillon was very much the same as that which inspired the _Journey to the Elysian Fields_ and the _Ephemera_. They were to a great extent, at any rate, mere literary bagatelles as those performances were--the offerings of an opulent wit and fancy at the shrine of beauty and fashion, which to be successful in an academic sense had to be informed by the spirit, and attuned to the note, of the time and place.