Franklin

by Davidson Butler

  Franklin pondered his own life. He was almost twenty-one. His life had been like a poorly written play - “a confused variety of different scenes.” He decided to make some resolutions.

  It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe.

  To endeavour to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action - the most amiable excellence in a rational being.

  To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of growing suddenly rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.

  I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but rather by some means excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and upon proper occasion speak all the good I know of everybody.”

  Arriving in Philadelphia, Franklin discovered his relationship with Miss Read had grown worse. In his first months in London, he had written her only once, implying it would be a long time before he came home. Consequently, she had married another man, a heavy drinker and potter by trade who left Philadelphia for the West Indies, leaving behind considerable debts.

  Blaming himself for her unhappiness, Franklin decided his conduct was related to his attitude toward religion. Franklin liked to say there was no such thing as morality. Now he began to think “that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance.”

  Back in Philadelphia, Franklin began practicing these principles. Bringing order into his life was only a step. A single person, though sincere and industrious, could not accomplish much. So Franklin formed a club, the Junto. He got the idea from a book by Cotton Mather, a Boston minister. The Junto met each Friday evening, and the rules Franklin made required every member to produce questions on some subject, such as politics, science, or morality. The group discussed these under direction of a president. Once every three months, each member had to write an essay on a subject that interested him to be debated by the group. Drawing on his experience as a debater, Franklin formulated rules that prohibited positive opinions and direct contradictions. Whoever broke the rules paid a fine.

  Along with the special questions, the rules required members to produce a set of “standing queries” that others were asked to consider each week. Among them were:

  “Hath any deserving stranger arrived in town since last meeting, that you heard of? And what have you heard or observed of his character or merits? And whether think you, it lies in the power of the Junto to oblige him, or to encourage him as he deserves.

  “Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?

  “Have you lately observed any defect in the laws of your country? Or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting?

  “Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people?

  These last two questions appeared repeatedly in Franklin’s life. He never stopped thinking about how improve the world, and he never stopped worrying that government, in the name of law and order, might take away the rights every Englishman believed he inherited at birth. Among these liberties were trial by a jury of one’s peers; the principle of habeas corpus, which forces a government to bring a person under arrest before a judge or a court; the right to petition the government for the redress of wrongs; and, above all, the right of free speech, permitting citizens to criticize the government in newspapers, speeches, and conversations.

  Meanwhile, Franklin coped with surprises in his career. Denham, the benefactor who had brought him home from England, died six months after returning to Philadelphia. Around the same time, Franklin almost perished from pleurisy. When he recovered, he returned to the printing business as foreman for his friend Keimer. He soon realized Keimer only wanted him to train apprentices; after they had learned printing, he planned to fire Franklin to save money. Franklin decided to go into business himself.

  He befriended Welshman Hugh Meredith, who had a wealthy father. The older Meredith agreed to set them up in business as partners if Franklin would train his son as a printer.

  They opened their print shop with plans to publish a newspaper. Philadelphia had only one paper, Andrew Bradford’s little-respected American Weekly Mercury. When Keimer heard about Franklin’s plans, he rushed to print a rival paper called The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette was a disaster: It didn’t have much news; most of the text was reprinted from an encyclopedia. In articles for the Mercury, Franklin ridiculed Keimer and his publication, and the number of subscribers to the Universal Instructor dwindled. Within a year, Keimer sold his paper to Franklin and Meredith. Franklin shortened the paper’s title to The Pennsylvania Gazette and went to work.

  Franklin impressed Philadelphians with his energy, working twelve to fifteen hours a day. Meredith gave him little help. Printing bored him, and he preferred to drink with friends. Because Meredith’s father had provided money for the business, Franklin never criticized his partner.

  At first, Philadelphia’s older merchants were sure Franklin and Meredith would fail, since two print shops were in town. But one of the city’s leading doctors, Patrick Baird, disagreed: “The industry of Franklin is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind. I see him still at work when I go home, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed.”

  Finally, two friends went to Franklin separately and offered him enough money to buy out his partner. Franklin accepted half of each man’s money and persuaded Meredith to sell his share. Meredith realized he was not suited to be a printer, and he and Franklin parted friends.

  Franklin built The Pennsylvania Gazette into the most successful newspaper in America. The wit Franklin displayed in his Silence Dogood letters made the paper popular. The Gazette was full of letters to the editor, some of which the editor wrote himself. There was Anthony Afterwit, who told stories about how his wife spent him into bankruptcy; Cecilia Single, a difficult woman who lectured the editor because, she said, he was partial to men; and Alice Addertongue, who said she was organizing a stock exchange for the sale and transfer of slander.

  Franklin carried on a war with his newspaper opposition, the Mercury, making readers laugh at his rival. He printed a letter from a man who declared himself the author of verses published in the Mercury. The fellow complained the editor of the Mercury had printed only the first two letters of his name, BL. “I request you to inform the publick that I did not desire my name should be concealed,” wrote the supposed author, “and that the remaining letters are 0, C, K, H, E, A, D.” Another letter reported that a single cannon ball had killed two prominent European soldiers - a remarkable achievement considering one was fighting in Germany, the other in Italy.

  Equally important to the success of The Pennsylvania Gazette was Franklin’s courage. In one of his first issues, he printed a story about a dispute between the Assembly of Massachusetts and Governor William Burnet. Franklin supported the stand of Massachusetts, whose inhabitants insisted on their right to pay the governor what they saw fit. He applauded its refusal to knuckle under to the “menaces of a Governour fam’d for his cunning in politicks.” Franklin said it was proof Americans still retained “that ardent spirit of liberty, and that undaunted courage in the defense of it, which has in every age so gloriously distinguished BRITONS & ENGLISHMEN from all the rest of mankind.” Later, Franklin recalled how his stand had “struck the principal people” in Philadelphia and gained new subscribers.

  Franklin’s attitude caused problems with the rulers of Pennsylvania. The sons of William Penn ruled Pennsylvania, unlike a royal province, run by a governor whom the king appointed. William Penn obtained the colony as a grant of land from the king, then sold the lands to settlers, retaining millions of acres. Penn’s two sons, Richard and Thomas, could appoint the governor and his counc
il, judges, and other officials.

  The Penns despised criticism, and when Franklin began pointing out faults of the government, his friends warned he and his paper never would be successful in Pennsylvania without the support of the Penns.

  Franklin listened to this advice and invited these pessimists to dinner. They sat down to a bare table, and the only food served was mush in wooden bowls. Franklin poured water into his bowl and began eating. His guests tried to follow his example, but the stuff tasted so bad they barely could swallow it. Finally, they asked what they were eating. “Sawdust meal and water,” Franklin said. “Now go tell the rest of Philadelphia that a man who can eat that for supper doesn’t need to be beholden to anyone.”

  Around this time, Franklin decided to marry Deborah Read, whom he had left when he sailed to London. Deborah was already married to the potter, although there were rumors that he had another wife and child in London and that he had been killed in a barroom brawl in the West Indies. Franklin had remained a friend to Deborah in the five years since his return to Philadelphia; he paid her frequent visits and gave her and her mother financial advice. Although he wanted to renew his romance with Deborah, he was not faithful to his feelings for her. He had made a mistake that made it crucial for him to have an understanding wife.

  Despite his resolution to lead a moral life, Franklin admitted in his Autobiography he found it difficult to control his sexual desires. Before he returned to Deborah, he had had an affair with a woman who, according to one story, peddled oysters from a basket or a pushcart in the streets of the city. From this liaison a son was born. Franklin named the boy William and accepted responsibility. Not wanting his son to be labeled illegitimate, and with marriage to the boy’s mother impossible, on September 1, 1730, Franklin accepted Deborah as his wife and brought his son into their household.

  There was no public wedding ceremony, since drawing attention to the union would put Deborah at risk. “Our mutual affection was revived, but there were now great objections to our union,” Franklin wrote. Under Pennsylvania law, she could be branded a felon by marrying Benjamin while still legally bound to her first husband. The penalty would have been severe: Thirty-nine lashes at the public whipping post and a life of hard labor in prison. Benjamin and Deborah joined instead into a common-law marriage. There was another benefit to this arrangement: Benjamin would not incur the debts run up by the potter.

  Deborah did her best to accept William as her own. She worked hard for Franklin, who recalled “how she assisted me cheerfully in my business, folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing old linen rags for the papermakers, etc., etc.” He recalled that in those days, he had been “clothed from head to foot in woolen and linen of my wife’s manufacture.” Deborah was Benjamin’s bookkeeper and ran the shop attached to his printing office, where he sold books and stationery.

  Franklin was grateful to Deborah and demonstrated it by writing her a love song. One night, at the Junto, he and his friends were discussing the number of love songs written to mistresses, but no one could name one song written in praise of a wife. The next day, Franklin gave this song to one friend and asked him to sing it at the next Junto meeting.

  Of their Chloes and Phillises poets may prate I sing my plain country Joan

  These twelve years my wife, still the joy of my life; Blest day that I made her my own.

  Not a word of her face, or her shape, or her eyes

  Or of flames or of darts you shall hear;

  Tho’ I beauty admire ‘tis virtue I prize

  That fades not in seventy year.

  Some faults have we all, and so has my Joan

  But then they’re exceedingly small;

  And now I’m grown us’d to ‘em, so like my own I scarcely can see ‘em at all.”

  Although they were not poor, the Franklins lived frugally. Benjamin noted that his breakfasts for a long time consisted of only bread and milk, “no tea,” which was served on cheap pottery with a pewter spoon. Deborah thought her husband was worthy of more and surprised him with a gift one morning, which she had scrimped and saved for in secret. “Being called one morning to breakfast, I found it in a china bowl with a spoon of silver. They . . . had cost her the enormous sum of three and twenty shillings, for which she had no other excuse or apology to make but that she thought her husband deserved a silver spoon and china bowl as well as any of his neighbors.”

  Two years into his marriage, with his paper thriving, Franklin launched a more successful publication - Poor Richard’s Almanack. Every publisher in the colonies tried to produce an almanac; it was an ideal way to use dead time when the presses were idle, and if the book became popular, it could be profitable.

  The almanac’s success depended on the appeal of the “philomath” - the astrologer who did the writing and predicting. Franklin realized most people read an almanac for amusement and didn’t believe anyone could predict the weather and other events accurately a year ahead. So Franklin created a philomath named Richard Saunders, who wrote a comical introduction to the first edition. Poor Richard explained he only had taken to writing because his wife was sick of watching him gaze at the stars and had ordered him to make money or she was going to burn his books and instruments.

  A philomath named Titan Leeds wrote an almanac that served as Franklin’s competition. Poor Richard explained he would have written almanacs long ago, but he hated to cut into his friend Titan’s profits. Now it was all right for him to publish, because Titan was about to die.

  Richard explained that according to the stars, Titan would die on October 17, 1733, while Titan’s calculations led him to believe he would survive until the twenty-sixth of the same month. Titan Leeds was infuriated and replied, insisting he was very much alive, calling Poor Richard a fraud. The next year, Poor Richard replied that Titan Leeds was certainly dead, because in the almanac that appeared under his name in 1734, “I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome manner. I am called a false predictor, an ignorant, a conceited scribbler, a fool and a lyar.” His friend Titan never would have treated him this way. Titan continued to spew insults, but the popularity of his almanac faded, while Poor Richard’s soared.

  Franklin became popular because of the proverbs that he sprinkled throughout Poor Richard’s Almanack. He took them from several books, including the Bible, but he often rewrote them to sharpen their wit.

  He’s a fool that makes his doctor his heir.

  Fish and visitors smell in three days.

  The worst wheel of a cart makes the most noise.

  Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn at no other.

  It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.

  Franklin made fun of philomaths who pretended they really could predict the future. “I find that this will be a plentiful year of all manner of good things for those who have enough,” he wrote, “but the orange trees in Greenland will go near to fare the worse for the cold . . .”

  Franklin was working hard to improve Philadelphia. With the help of the Junto and the Gazette, he founded the city’s first volunteer fire department and reorganized the city’s policemen, who patrolled the streets at night. To help everyone educate themselves, he founded a subscription library, the first in America. He was the guiding spirit behind the Pennsylvania Hospital and the Philadelphia Academy, which became the University of Pennsylvania. He helped organize the colony’s first militia, the Philadelphia Associaters, to defend against a French and Spanish invasion. At the same time, he served as clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly.

  In all his endeavors, Franklin practiced an unusual strategy. When he began soliciting subscriptions for the library, he realized others thought he was doing the job solely for credit. Franklin quickly put himself “as much as I could out of sight” and described the project as “a scheme of a number of friends” who asked him to gather support of “lovers of reading.” The library soon was thriving, and Franklin stayed in the background, never taking credit for anything he achieve
d.

  One situation marred Franklin’s happiness. Six years after his marriage, Deborah gave birth to a son, whom Franklin named Francis Folger. At the age of four, the boy died of smallpox. Franklin blamed himself. While an apprentice to his brother, he had joined him in criticizing Cotton Mather’s appeal for mass smallpox inoculation. He followed through on this stance by refusing to have Francis inoculated. After Francis’ death, to spare other families his immense grief, he penned an editorial supporting smallpox inoculation. It was published in both his Almanack and the Gazette. For the rest of his life, any mention of Francis brought Franklin to tears.

  After this loss, Deborah became more jealous of William. She resented the attention Franklin showered on his only son. Franklin bought William expensive presents, such as a pony, which the boy let wander away. Seven years of common-law marriage had legitimized William, and Franklin meant to give him every advantage.

  Benjamin hired a tutor for his son at age eight. Theophilus Grew was a mathematician and astronomer, who collaborated with Franklin on Poor Richard’s Almanack. William studied for a year at Alexander Annand’s classical academy – an elite Philadelphia school – but, like Benjamin, his education was primarily homegrown. The boy immersed himself in books from his father’s store, which provided a curriculum in Roman and Catholic Church history, as well as Greek and Latin grammar and literature.

  William amused himself by flying kites in the spring, swimming and fishing in summer, and sledding and skating in winter. He joined an amateur theater group that staged plays in a warehouse and bet on horses – activities equally frowned upon in the Quaker city. Often, William gravitated to the docks, where he watched as ships unloaded exotic goods imported from as far away as India. He began to grow restless, thinking of escape and adventure.