Franklin could not, in fact, separate his political and philosophic reputations. His writings were widely read in France, perhaps more so there than in Britain and definitely more than in the United States. So close was his association with science that some correspondents addressed him as of the Académie, rather than of the United States. And people assumed that he, the Prospero of the new republic, enlisted science into the service of the United States. In Britain, rumors flew in 1777 that the electrical ambassador had a device, “the size of a toothpick case,” that could reduce St. Paul’s Cathedral “to a handful of ashes.” He was also thought to be on the brink of erecting a battery of deflecting mirrors at Calais that would incinerate the British fleet.40
Franklin’s status as a Newtonian experimenter in physics had particular cachet among French men of science. As in England, chemical experimentation had replaced physics as the hot topic. But in France, this meant that physics was regarded as a rather grand preserve of the old guard of the Académie Royale. And Franklin was doubly honored as a Newtonian veteran of the momentous battle against the Cartesians.
His work had helped rout the Cartesians, and this fact associated him powerfully with François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, the mocking conscience of the Old Regime. In the 1730s, Voltaire had allied himself with French Newtonians, including Maupertuis and Gabrielle Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Chatelet, the French translator of Newton’s Principia. (Du Chatelet was mistress to both her fellow Newtonians.) Voltaire had published popularized interpretations of Newton that helped win the day. The frontispiece to Voltaire’s Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton (1737) shows Newton presiding from the clouds as heavenly light bounces off a mirror, held by du Chatelet, to illuminate the French philosophe. It helped that Voltaire was neither mathematician nor natural philosopher; even more than Franklin, his Newtonianism seemed impartial because it was untutored. From the 1740s onward, Cartesianism faded. The death of the last “Cartesian” in the Académie des Sciences was proclaimed in 1771. With superb timing, Franklin arrived at the Académie just when Newton’s triumph was complete.41
In France, however, French Newtonianism bore a dangerous subtext: Newton, an Englishman, had seen the light because he lived in a better place, a polity that protected person, property, and free debate. Voltaire had said as much—and not always in a sufficiently coded fashion. For this and other criticisms, he had suffered arrest, imprisonment, and exile. By the time Franklin arrived, Voltaire lived in the country and had not seen Paris for years.42
Voltaire as Newtonian philosopher. [François-Marie Arouet] Voltaire, Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton ( 1 738 ) . HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
French officials might have banished Voltaire but not demands for reform. The Physiocrats were the foremost group of reformers. Physiocracy meant “rule of nature.” The economic theorists’ very name indicated their determination to model society on scientific principles. They believed that agriculture was the source of all wealth and so sought changes in landholding, land use, and taxation. Even more radically, the mathematician Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, proposed an entire human science modeled on natural science. More practically, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, tried to implement plans to loosen government regulation of economic affairs during an extremely brief tenure as a government minister. Finally, there were the Freemasons, including Claude-Adrien Helvétius. The Masons stood for an alternate social order, based on the equal exchange of ideas. They were positioned against the church, even as they were well stocked with aristocrats who were otherwise comfortable with the status quo.43
The proposals to change France, particularly to pry the church out of public affairs and to reform taxes, were no small things. They clearly provided the liveliest points of debate within France, and a famous American man of science was highly coveted for his opinion on them. Franklin was eventually to be found not only at the Académie but also within Physiocratic circles (which included Barbeu-Dubourg and Turgot), in the Masonic Loge des Neuf Soeurs, and at the salon of Helvétius’s widow.
At first glance, Franklin resembled the reformers found in those places. As a man of science and of politics, he seemed akin to the French pioneers of the human sciences. The Physiocrats regarded the crisply sapient La science du Bonhomme Richard as a remarkable analysis of rural life. A new edition of “Bonhomme Richard” appeared in 1777, the year when Franklin was busy crafting his image as American emissary. Because it was not packaged among philosophic essays (unlike the 1773 Barbeu-Dubourg edition of Franklin’s work), the version of 1779 became a popular best-seller. It ran through four editions in two years, and Franklin bestowed copies on social callers, patrons, and clients.44
But his wide-ranging essays and opinions did not fit into any single school. He agreed with the Physiocrats that agriculture was the foundation of national wealth, but he had also written a great deal on trade and credit. He had criticized taxes in his 1766 interview in Parliament but had elsewhere conceded that the British Navigation Acts were necessary. The Physiocrats saw what they wanted to see and claimed Franklin as one of their own in their journal, the Ephémérides. Franklin offered writings to the journal but was careful not to side openly with any distinct opinion, lest he alienate its opponents. Turgot scolded a fellow Physiocrat who had claimed Franklin’s support for suffering from “a sectarian spirit.”45
Franklin also disapproved of the sectarianism, and in 1778, he put a little distance between himself and the Physiocrats. He wrote a “Lettre à Madame B.” Madame Brillon was his beautiful neighbor, inconveniently married (and faithful) to another man. The letter offered Brillon a history of mayflies. Franklin had just seen the insects swarm in the country, and his letter became known as “The Ephemera,” the French name for mayflies. “You know I understand all the inferior Animal Tongues,” Franklin assured Brillon. (This was his rueful acknowledgment of his inability to master the human language of French.) Buffon had theorized that the world would end when the sun went out and everything died of cold. Remarkably, Franklin’s tiny, winged informants endorsed the French naturalist’s idea. Their knowledge of the world’s impending doom amplified their melancholy over their own brief lives, over in a day. “What now avails all my Toil and Labour,” demanded one fly, who was 420 minutes old, so quite “greyheaded.” “What the political Struggles . . . or my philosophical Studies for the Benefit of our Race in general!”46
Thus, Franklin hinted to the Physiocrats, who published Ephémérides, that their theories were even more ephemeral than they thought. He had gone native. He had yet to learn French, but already he had mastered France’s clever, elliptical code. The gentle rebuke said much about Franklin. He ceaselessly scanned nature for pattern, for predictability, for truth. But he did not, and would not model a whole science of humanity on the physical sciences. As a younger generation explored the frontiers of a comprehensive human science, Franklin stopped at political arithmetic. He may even have begun to repent his firmer statements, as in the Declaration of Independence, about nature’s laws imparting political truths.
However elegantly, Franklin was ducking the question of how exactly “the Laws of Nature” explained the human condition. Was it absurd that the United States based its independence on natural law? Bonhomme Richard found profundity within absurdity. He proposed another way to derive wisdom from nature: eavesdrop on insects.
THOUGH Franklin did not produce any new work in natural science, his reputation continued to grow. Just as he had once frequented a London coffeehouse hoping to spot Newton, so fans now stalked him. One admirer paid for a place at a window so he could see Franklin “pass by in his coach” but then barely saw the great man. Correspondents submitted corroboration of his work on electricity and on stilling fluids with oil. Everyone wanted Dr. Franklin for their learned societies; he would eventually be affiliated with organizations from Padua to St. Petersburg. It was all very heady—and not just for Franklin. Seeing French
people mob his fellow commissioner, Silas Deane confessed his “Joy and Pride . . . for I considered it an honor to be known to be an American and his Friend.”47
Others were irritated. When one French noblewoman would not stop rhapsodizing about Franklin, Louis XVI presented her with a chamber pot imprinted with the American’s portrait—inside. John Adams, the American commissioner who replaced Deane, hated that the same French people who scorned his attempts at their language would hang on Franklin’s every mispronounced, ungrammatical utterance. William Lee sarcastically wrote his commissioner brother, Arthur, that Franklin was listed among the “M.D.’s lately incorporated by his most Christian Majesty for examining and licensing all quack medicines.”48
These criticisms were important: French adulation of Franklin was irrational. His self-taught prowess in science was highly unusual in France. As with the rest of French society, learning was more centralized and hierarchical than it was in Britain (let alone America). The crown took an active role in the Académie Royale des Sciences, where aristocrats were also prominent. Personal or state-granted privileges afforded French men of science steady funding, so they were able to specialize more than their British counterparts. Lavoisier, for instance, could focus on chemical work because he was a “rent farmer,” a tax official supported by the very taxes that worried political reformers. The self-made generalist who rigged up experiments with his fireplace or with bits of cork, glass, and metal—a man such as Matthew Boulton or John Canton or Benjamin Franklin— was rare in France. For some of the French, Franklin’s lowly origins and self-creation added to his mystique. Other Parisians questioned that a mere printer, a craftsman who did not even know the proper way to eat asparagus, should rise so high.49
But Franklin was a genius and could eat his asparagus however he pleased. The French did not commonly use the word génie as a noun for a person, as the English were doing with genius, yet the French term did imply an almost inhuman gift, which was the key to understanding Franklin. Barbeu-Dubourg had set the pattern in the preface to Franklin’s French Oeuvres: “La fécondité de son génie” made Franklin peerless. The term appeared again and again—mostly used, it should be said, to flatter him. Thus, Pierre Turini extolled the “Sublimité” of Franklin’s “Genie” in a letter designed to get the busy American to write back.50
To honor his genius, the French ushered Franklin—alive, mortal, and a commoner—into the company of the glorious dead, the gods, and crowned heads. These images of an almost divine Franklin were often modeled on those of Newton. Indeed, one correspondent promised to install in his home Franklin’s portrait alongside those of “Newton, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu et l’Imperatrice de Russie.” One verse made the crucial connection between Franklin’s wisdom about nature and his wisdom over human affairs: “He made in Philadelphia / a temple for philosophy / and a throne for liberty.”51
And then there was that famous claim about Franklin. “Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis”: he snatched lightning from heaven, and the scepter from the tyrants. Attributed to Turgot, the phrase followed Franklin everywhere. Jean Antoine Houdon inscribed it on his important marble bust of Franklin, and Jean Baptiste Nini wrote it on his myriad terra cotta profiles.52
The Franklin mania peaked after news of the American victory at Saratoga arrived in December 1777. Now, the French thought the Americans were worth helping. They also needed help—Saratoga was only one of many battles, most of which the Americans had lost. Vergennes invited the American commissioners to resubmit Congress’s petition for a Franco-American alliance. France signed treaties of alliance and of amity and commerce with the United States in February 1778. After nearly two years of uncertainty, another nation had acknowledged the Declaration of Independence and recognized the existence of the United States. Military assistance followed, along with the recognition and alliance of other nations. The American commissioners had accomplished the primary goal of their mission. Yet again, Franklin emerged from a collaborative venture with most of the credit. In September 1778, Congress dissolved the collaborative mission and appointed him sole minister plenipotentiary, or ambassador.
He enjoyed the moment conspicuously, by attending balls and other entertainments. But though they did not look like work, these appearances were efforts to promote the American cause and opportunities for Franklin to advertise his learned image. He was careful, for instance, to redisplay his place in the republic of letters. After he had claimed a place at the Académie des Sciences early in 1777, diplomatic work dragged him away. In December, after the glorious news of Saratoga, he reappeared. Even social events let him showcase himself as a philosopher. After the alliance was signed, Franklin celebrated by attending a ball and kissing a great many obliging ladies. They dodged his scholarly “besicles” (spectacles) and he their elaborate rouge and powder. Then, in March, he was finally presented to the king and queen. One witness noted Franklin’s bare head and “besicles,” and “his manner, as if patriarch and founder of a nation, joined to his fame as discoverer of electricity, legislator for thirteen united provinces, and his wisdom”—the full scientific-political package.53
Amid the joy in 1778, a dying Voltaire returned from exile, and he and Franklin cheerfully used each other to promote their celebrity. With Temple, Franklin called on Voltaire, who, carefully arranged in his sickbed, blessed the young man in English: “God and Liberty.” (It became Temple’s motto.) Then Voltaire was admitted to the Loge des Neuf Soeurs on April 7, assisted by Franklin, Philadelphia brother. The men met again in April at the Académie des Sciences, where they were urged to embrace; when the two triumphant Newtonians and critics of tyranny did so, they were applauded. (Witnessing the embrace at the Académie, John Adams dismissed the “two Aged Actors upon this great Theatre of Philosophy and frivolity.”) In late May, Franklin was himself admitted to the Loge des Neuf Soeurs and would inherit from Voltaire the Masonic apron of Helvétius, the lodge’s founder.54
Then, as everyone had been expecting, Voltaire died. His body had to be smuggled out of Paris, lest it end in a pit of quicklime, the fate of suspected atheists in France, who could not be buried in a manner befitting Christians. It was acceptable to express sorrow at this loss (the queen did) but not to go on and on about it. Yet in November, Franklin joined an elaborate Masonic memorial service for Voltaire. At the Loge des Neuf Soeurs, he and others laid crowns below a painting of the apotheosis of Voltaire; a verse about defeating thunder, an unmistakable allusion to Franklin’s defiance of tyranny, drew applause. It was almost designed to annoy the Paris police. Franklin may not have comprehended their disapproval, or perhaps, with his new confidence, he did not care. Irate government officials threatened to close the lodge. They backed down one day before Franklin took over a high position as the lodge’s vénérable.55
The timing of the lodge’s reprieve indicated Franklin’s unassailable status within Franco-American affairs. Once an official alliance between the United States and France had been forged, his place in Franco-American affairs and cultural life was too important to create any scandal by censuring him. The modern Prometheus could indeed defy gods and tyrants.
And so, the images of Franklin as immortal sage piled up. At the top of the heap was the first portrayal of his apotheosis, “To the Genius of Franklin.” In 1779, Marguerite Gérard produced this etching, based on a design by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Clad in flowing robes and seated on clouds, Franklin points at menacing figures, and Mars repels them. Knowledge, personified by Minerva, shields Franklin from lightning; America (her fasces represent the United States) leans in a daughterly way on Franklin. And underneath it all is the famous phrase about defying heaven and tyranny. Note the resemblance to the Newton of Voltaire’s frontispiece: both philosophers sit on clouds, point meaningfully, and are attended by females who direct heavenly effusions.56
Franklin marveled at his proliferating likenesses. “Pictures, busts, and prints,” not to mention medallions, snuffboxes, and other knickknacks,
brought the famous Philadelphian into hundreds of public and private chambers in Paris and beyond, even in Britain. His face, as he told his daughter, was “as well known as that of the moon.” He reveled in the impiety of it all. “It is said by learned etymologists that the name Doll, for the images children play with, is derived from the word IDOL; from the number of dolls now made of him [self], he may be truly said, in that sense, to be i-doll-ized in this country.”57
As the Franklin trinkets poured out of workshops, people began to worry. Was an inhuman power over nature necessarily a good thing? Suddenly, the American Merlin was a menacing figure, not so much idol as demon. Franklin had been the first to benefit fully from the idea that genius in science made a man a genius in all realms. Now, he would be first to suffer from the suspicion that his genius made him dangerous.
Franklin almighty. Marguerite Gérard, “Au génie de Franklin” (1779). DAVISON ART CENTER, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY.
Franklin appeared in fiction for the first time in 1778, in Jean Jacques Le Roux des Tillets’s Dialogue entre Pasquin & Marforio (1778), a satire on a contemporary medical dispute. Le Roux des Tillets bestowed on Franklin the magical power to end quarrels at the Société Royale de Médicine. At the end of the piece, Franklin, to the accompaniment of thunder, waved a wand to transform each partisan into the animal that best represented his character. Other images of Franklin as a magician were less benign. A farce of 1779 claimed that he “forced the thunder to fall where he ordered it” and had “electrified a dog on the opposite bank of a river, making him howl like a martyr,” a rather dark reading of Franklin’s electrical picnic in Philadelphia. His crowning achievement was said to come when “he electrified the minds of all the Americans and made them believe that all the pain they suffered came directly from the Palace of Saint James in London.”58
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