The True Benjamin Franklin Part 27

LONDON Mar. 3, 73

MR. FOXCROFT,

Dear Friend--

I am favoured with yours of June 5, and am glad to hear that you and yours are well. The Flour and Bisket came to hand in good order. I am much obliged to you and your brother for your care in sending them.

I believe I wrote you before that the Demand made upon us on Acct. of the Packet Letters was withdrawn as being without Foundation. As to the Ohio Affair we are daily amused with Expectations that it is to be compleated at this and T'other time, but I see no Progress made in it. And I think more and more that I was right in never placing any great dependence on it. Mr. Todd has received your 200.

Mr. Finlay sailed yesterday for New York. Probably you will have seen him before this comes to hand.

You misunderstood me if you thought I meant in so often mentioning our Acct. to press an immediate Payment of the Ballance. My Wish only was, that you would inspect the Account and satisfy yourself that I had paid you when here that large supposed Ballance in my own wrong. If you are now satisfied about it and transmit me the Account you promise with the Ballance stated I shall be easy and you will pay it when convenient.

With my Love to my Daughter &c I am ever Dear Friend

Yours most affectionately B. FRANKLIN

Bigelow's "Works of Franklin," vol. v. p. 201:

LONDON, 14 July, 1773.

TO MR. FOXCROFT.

Dear Friend:--I received yours of June 7th, and am glad to find by it that you are safely returned from your Virginia journey, having settled your affairs there to satisfaction, and that you found your family well at New York.

I feel for you in the fall you had out of your chair. I have had three of those squelchers in different journeys, and never desire a fourth.

I do not think it was without reason that you continued so long one of St. Thomas' disciples: for there was always some cause for doubting. Some people always ride before the horse's head.

The draft of the patent is at length got into the hands of the Attorney General, who must approve the form before it pa.s.ses the seals, so one would think much more time can scarce be required to complete the business: but 'tis good not to be too sanguine.

He may go into the country, and the Privy Councillors likewise, and some months elapse before they get together again: therefore, if you have any patience, use it.

I suppose Mr. Finlay will be some time at Quebec in settling his affairs. By the next packet you will receive a draft of instructions for him.

In mine of December 2d, upon the post-office accounts to April, 1772, I took notice to you that I observed I had full credit for my salary: but no charge appeared against me for money paid on my account to Mrs. Franklin from the Philadelphia office. I supposed the thirty pounds currency per month was regularly paid, because I had had no complaint from her for want of money, and I expected to find the charge in the accounts of the last year--that is, to April 3, 1773: but nothing of it appearing there, I am at a loss to understand it, and you take no notice of my observation above mentioned. The great balance due from that office begins to be remarked here, and I should have thought the officer would, for his own sake, not have neglected to lessen it by showing what he had paid on my account. Pray, my dear friend, explain this to me.

I find by yours to Mr. Todd that you expected soon another little one. G.o.d send my daughter a good time, and you a good boy. Mrs. Stevenson is pleased with your remembrance of her, and joins with Mr. and Mrs. Hewson and myself in best wishes for you and yours.

I am ever yours affectionately,

B. FRANKLIN.

American Philosophical Society Collection, vol. xlv., No. 80:

LONDON Feb. 18, 1774

MR. FOXCROFT,

Dear Friend--

It is long since I have heard from you. I hope nothing I have written has occasioned any coolness. We are no longer Colleagues, but let us part as we have lived so long in Friendship.

I am displaced unwillingly by our masters who were obliged to comply with the orders of the Ministry. It seems I am too much of an American. Take care of yourself for you are little less.

I hope my daughter continues well. My blessing to her. I shall soon, G.o.d willing, have the Pleasure of seeing you, intending homewards in May next. I shall only wait the Arrival of the April Pacquet with the accounts, that I may settle them here before I go.

I beg you will not fail of forwarding them by that Opportunity, which will greatly oblige.

Dear Friend

Yours most affectionately

It is to be observed of all these letters that, like the original letter of Foxcroft, they are entirely serious. They are business letters. They are not letters of amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure, in which Franklin might joke and laugh with a young girl and in sport call her his daughter. They are not addressed to the woman in question but to her husband, and at the close of long details about business matters he simply says "give my love to my daughter," or he refers to her, as in the letter next to the last, as about to have another child. Read in connection with Foxcroft's original letter, they form very strong proof that Franklin believed Mrs.

Foxcroft to be his daughter.

But the reviewer says that Mr. Fisher notes in two places that women correspondents in writing to Franklin called him father and signed themselves "your daughter." Mr. Fisher notes on page 332 the letter of a girl written to Franklin in broken French and English, in which she begins by calling him "My dear father Americain," and signs herself "your humble servant and your daughter J. B. J. Conway." The letter is obviously childish and sportive. We do not find the other instance of a similar letter to which the reviewer alludes. The Conway letter is such a frivolous one that it amounts to nothing as proof to overcome the serious, solemn statements by Franklin and Foxcroft in their letters. A light-minded French girl calling Franklin her father is very different from serious, business-like statements by Franklin saying that a certain woman was his daughter.

The reviewer goes on to say that "a little more research would have shown him [Mr. Fisher] letters of Franklin couched in the same parental terms." The meaning of this is presumably that Franklin was in the habit of calling the young women he corresponded with his daughters. This, however, it will be observed, is quite a different matter from Franklin's writing to a husband and sending love to the husband's wife as his daughter. But there are some letters to young girls on which a reckless, slap-dash reviewer would be likely to base the statement that Franklin habitually called women his daughters. Let us look into these letters and see what they are.

Franklin's first correspondent of this sort was Miss Catherine Ray, of Rhode Island. They were great friends and exchanged some beautiful letters, almost unequalled in the English language. They are collected in Bigelow's "Works of Franklin," vol. ii. pp. 387, 414, 495. The letter at page 387 begins "Dear Katy," and ends "believe me, my dear girl, your affectionate faithful friend and humble servant." The letter at page 414 begins "My Katy," speaks of her as "dear girl," and ends with the same phrase as the previous one, except that the word "faithful" is left out.

The one at page 495 begins "Dear Katy," and closes "Adieu dear good girl and believe me ever your affectionate friend." In none of these letters does he speak of her as his daughter.

The letters to Miss Catherine Louisa Shipley and to Miss Georgiana Shipley, the daughters of the Bishop of St. Asaph, are friendly but not very endearing in the terms used. He once calls Georgiana "My dear friend," and in the famous letter on the squirrel addresses her as "My dear Miss." He nowhere calls them his daughters.

The letters that come nearest to what the reviewer wants are those to Miss Mary Stevenson. There are quite a number of them, and she and Franklin were on the most affectionate terms. We will give the citations of them in Bigelow, although any one can look them up in the index: In vol. iii. pp. 34, 46, 54, 56, 62, 139, 151, 186, 187, 195, 209, 232, 238, 245; in vol. iv. pp. 17, 33, 212, 258, 264, 287, 332, 339; in vol.

x. p. 285. These letters call Miss Stevenson "Dear Polly," "My dear friend," "My good girl," and "My dear good girl." The first of them, vol. iii. p. 34, begins by addressing her as "dear child," and another, vol. iii. p. 209, closes by saying "Adieu my dear child. I will call you so. Why should I not call you so, since I love you with all the tenderness of a father."

This may be what the reviewer had in his mind. But Franklin nowhere calls Miss Stevenson his daughter. The word daughter and child are very different. We all of us often call children we fancy "my child."

Franklin's use of the word child as applied to Miss Stevenson has from the context of the letters a perfectly obvious meaning,--no one can mistake it; just as his use of the word daughter in the Foxcroft letters has, from the context and all the circ.u.mstances, a perfectly obvious meaning.

It would be endless to discuss all the reviewer's irrelevant and extravagant statements. We shall call attention to only one other ill.u.s.tration of his methods. He closes one of his wild paragraphs by saying that if "Mr. Fisher wishes further knowledge on this subject for 'speculation,' we recommend him to read Franklin's letter to Foxcroft of September 7, 1774."

The reviewer is careful not to quote from this letter or even to say where it may be found, and the inference the ordinary reader would draw from the way it is paraded is that it contains some very positive denial that Mrs. Foxcroft was Franklin's daughter. But when it is examined, it is found to be a business letter like the others, referring to the lady in question as "Mrs. Foxcroft" instead of as "my daughter," a perfectly natural way of referring to her and entirely consistent with the other letters. We give the letter in full. It is in the American Philosophical Society Collection, vol. xlv., No. 94:

LONDON Sept. 7, 1774.

MR. FOXCROFT,

Dear Friend--

Mr. Todd called to see me yesterday. I perceive there is good deal of uneasiness at the office concerning the Delay of the Accounts. He sent me in the Evening to read and return to him a Letter he had written to you for the Mail. Friendship requires me to urge earnestly your Attention to the contents, if you value the Continuance of your Appointment; for these are times of uncertainty, and I think it not unlikely that there is some Person in view ready to step into your Shoes, if a tolerable reason could be given for dismissing you. Mr. Todd is undoubtedly your Friend. But everything is not always done as he would have it This to yourself; and I confide that you will take it as I mean it for your Good.

Several Packets are arrived since I have had a Line from you.

But I had the pleasure of seeing by yours to Mr. Todd that you and Mrs. Foxcroft with your little Girl are all in good Health which I pray may continue.

I am ever my dear old friend

Yours most affectionately

B. FRANKLIN.