The essay, which parodied both human habits and scientific treatises, reflected (as did his writings as a youth) the influence of Jonathan Swift. “It was the type of irony Swift would have written in place of ‘A Modest Proposal’ if he had spent five years in the company of Mmes. Helvétius and Brillon,” notes Alfred Owen Aldridge.37
A similar scientific spoof, even more fun and famous (or perhaps notorious), was the mock proposal he made to the Royal Academy of Brussels that they study the causes and cures of farting. Noting that the academy’s leaders, in soliciting questions to study, claimed to “esteem utility,” he suggested a “serious enquiry” that would be worthy of “this enlightened age”:
It is universally well known that in digesting our common food, there is created or produced in the bowels of human creatures a great quantity of wind. That the permitting this air to escape and mix with the atmosphere is usually offensive to the company from the fetid smell that accompanies it. That all well-bred people therefore, to avoid giving such offense, forcibly restrain the efforts of nature to discharge that wind. That so retained contrary to nature, it not only gives frequently great present pain, but occasions future diseases…
Were it not for the odiously offensive smell accompanying such escapes, polite people would probably be under no more restraint in discharging such wind in company than they are in spitting or in blowing their noses. My Prize Question therefore should be, To discover some drug wholesome and not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common food or sauces, that shall render the natural discharges of wind from our bodies, not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes.
With a pretense of scientific seriousness, Franklin proceeded to explain how different foods and minerals change the odor of farts. Might not a mineral such as lime work to make the smell pleasant? “This is worth the experiment!” There would be “immortal honor” attached to whoever made the discovery, he argued, for it would be far more “useful [than] those discoveries in science that have heretofore made philosophers famous.” All the works of Aristotle and Newton, he noted, do little to help those plagued by gas. “What comfort can the vortices of Descartes give to a man who has whirlwinds in his bowels!” The invention of a fart perfume would allow hosts to pass wind freely with the comfort that it would give pleasure to their guests. Compared to this luxury, he said with a bad pun, previous discoveries “are, all together, scarcely worth a Fart-hing.”
Although he printed this farce privately at his press in Passy, Franklin apparently had qualms and never released it publicly. He did, however, send it to friends, and he noted in particular that it might be of interest to one of them, the famous chemist and gas specialist Joseph Priestley, “who is apt to give himself airs.”38
Yet another delightful essay of mock science was written as a letter to the Abbé Morellet. It celebrated the wonders of wine and the glories of the human elbow:
We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy. The miracle in question was performed only to hasten the operation.
As for the human elbow, Franklin explained, it was important that it be located at the right place, otherwise it would be hard to drink wine. If Providence had placed the elbow too low on the arm, it would be hard for the forearm to reach the mouth. Likewise, if the elbow had been placed too high, the forearm would overshoot the mouth. “But by the actual situation, we are enabled to drink at our ease, the glass going exactly to the mouth. Let us, then, with glass in hand, adore this benevolent wisdom; let us adore and drink!”39
Family Matters
Where did this new circle of ersatz family members leave Franklin’s actual family? At a distance. His daughter, Sally, who adored him, wrote of her diligence in restoring their house in Philadelphia after the British had withdrawn in May 1778. But whereas the letters from his French lady friends began “Cher Papa,” most of those from his real daughter began more stiffly, with “Dear and honored sir.” His replies, addressed to “Dear Sally” and occasionally “My Dear Child,” often expressed delight about the exploits of his grandchildren. But sometimes even his compliments were freighted with exhortations. “If you knew how happy your letters make me,” he lectured at one point, “I think you would write oftener.”
In early 1779, Sally wrote of the high price of goods in America and how she was busy spinning her own tablecloths. Unfortunately, however, she made the mistake of adding that she had been invited to a ball in honor of General Washington and had sent to France for pins, lace, and feathers so she could look fashionable. “There never was so much dressing and pleasure going on,” she exulted to her father, and she added that she hoped he would send her some accessories so that she could take pride in showing off his taste.
At the time, Franklin was writing his sweet bagatelles to his French friends and promising Polly Stevenson a pair of diamond earrings if one of his lottery tickets won. But he responded with dismay at Sally’s plea for a few luxuries. “Your sending for long black pins, and lace, and feathers! disgusted me as much as if you had put salt in my strawberries,” he chided. “The spinning, I see, is laid aside, and you are to be dressed for the ball! You seem not to know, my dear daughter, that, of all the dear things in this world, idleness is the dearest.” He sent her some of the items she had requested “that are useful and necessary,” but added a dose of homespun advice, with just a touch of his humor, about the frivolous fineries. “If you wear your cambric ruffles as I do, and take care not to mend the holes, they will come in time to be lace; and feathers, my dear girl, may be had in America from every cock’s tail.”40
Clearly hurt, she replied with a detailed description of how industrious and frugal she was being, and she tried to work back into his graces by sending over some homespun American silk for him to present from her to Queen Marie-Antoinette. Knowing her father’s desire to promote the local silk industry, she noted, “It will show what can be sent from America.”
It was a sweet gesture, with all the elements—industriousness, self-lessness, promotion of American products, gratitude toward France—that should have appealed to Franklin. Alas, the silk was stained by salt water on the way over and, worse yet, her father scoffed at the entire scheme. “I wonder how, having yourself scarce shoes to your feet, it would come into your head to give clothes to a Queen,” he wrote back. “I shall see if the stains can be covered by dyeing it and make summer suits of it for myself, Temple and Benny.” He did, however, end on a kinder and gentler note. “All the things you order will be sent, for you continue to be a good girl, and spin and knit your family stockings.”41
Franklin’s heart proved far softer when it came to news about his grandchildren. In late 1779, Sally had a fourth child and, in hopes of pleasing Franklin, baptized the boy Louis, after the French king. The name was so unusual in America that people had to inquire whether the child was a boy or girl. When her son Willy recited the Lord’s Prayer after a nightmare and addressed it to Hercules, she asked her father for his advice: “Whether it is best to instruct him in a little religion or let him pray a little longer to Hercules?” Franklin replied, with a hint of humor, that she should teach him “to direct his worship more properly, for the deity of Hercules is now quite out of fashion.” Sally complied. A little later she wrote that Willy was learning his Bible well and that he had “an extraordinary memory” for all literature. “He has learned the speech of Anthony over Caesar’s body, which he can scarcely speak without tears.” Her daughter, Elizabeth, she added, was fond of looking at the picture of her grandfather “and has frequently tried to tempt you to walk out of the frame to play with her with a piece of apple pie, the thing of all others she likes best.”42
Sally also found a project that enabled her to earn Franklin’s
unvarnished approval. With Washington’s army suffering in tattered uniforms in December 1779, she rallied the women of Philadelphia to raise donations, buy cloth, and sew more than two thousand shirts for the beleaguered troops. “I am very busily employed in cutting out and making shirts…for our brave soldiers,” she reported. When Washington tried to pay cash for even more shirts, the ladies refused it and kept working for free. “I hope you will approve of what we have done,” she wrote, clearly fishing for an expression of praise. Franklin, of course, did approve. He wrote back commending her for her “amor patrie,” and he had an account of her activities published in France.43
Her son Benny also felt the vagaries of Franklin’s affection, even though the boy had been snatched from the bosom of the Bache family to accompany him to Europe. After two years at a boarding school near Passy, where he saw his grandfather but once a week, the quiet 9-year-old was packed off to an academy in Geneva, where he would not see him for more than four years. Despite his love of the French, Franklin felt that a Catholic monarchy was not the best place to educate his grandson, he wrote Sally, “as I intend him for a Presbyterian as well as a Republican.”44
Benny was taken to Geneva by a French diplomat, Philibert Cramer, who was a publisher of Voltaire. Hungry as ever for affection and a father figure, Benny latched on to Cramer, who died suddenly a few months later. So he lived for a while with Cramer’s widow, Catherine, and then was left in the charge of Gabriel Louis de Marignac, a former poet and military officer who ran the academy.
Horribly lonely, Benny begged that his brother William, or his former Passy classmate John Quincy Adams, be sent to join him. At the very least, could he please have a picture of Franklin and some news? Franklin, ever willing to send out his portrait, obliged with one, along with the news of Sally’s success in supplying shirts to Washington’s troops. “Be diligent in your studies that you also may be qualified to do service to your country and be worthy of so good a mother,” he wrote. He also sent word that four of Benny’s former Passy schoolmates had died of smallpox, and he should be thankful he had been inoculated as a child. Yet even his expressions of affection contained a note of contingency. “I shall always love you very much if you continue to be a good boy,” he closed one letter.45
Benny did well his first year and even won the school prize for translating Latin into French. Franklin sent him some money so that he could host the celebration the prizewinner traditionally gave for his classmates. He also asked Polly Stevenson, still in London, to pick out some books for Benny in English, as he was showing signs of losing that language. Polly, knowing how to flatter her friend, picked out a book that included mentions of Franklin.46
But Benny eventually fell into the funk of a depressed adolescent, perhaps because Franklin never visited, nor did Temple, nor was he brought back to Passy for vacations. He turned shy and indolent, reported Madame Cramer, who continued to keep an eye on him. “He has an excellent heart; he is sensible, reasonable, he is serious, but he has neither gaiety nor vivacity; he is cold, he has few needs, no fantasies.” He didn’t play cards, never got in fights, and showed no signs that he would ever display “great talents” or “passions.” (In this prediction she was wrong, for in later life Benny would become a crusading newspaper editor.) When she reminded Benny that he had won the Latin prize and was clearly capable of being a good student, “he answered coldly that it had been sheer luck,” she wrote Franklin. And when she offered to request for him a larger allowance from his grandfather, he showed no interest.
Benny’s parents became worried, and Richard Bache timidly suggested that perhaps Franklin could find time to go see him. “It would give us pleasure to hear that you had found leisure enough to visit him at Geneva,” Bache wrote, noting that “the journey might conduce to your health.” But it was a tentative suggestion made almost apologetically. “I suspect your time has been more importantly employed,” he quickly added. Madame Cramer, for her part, suggested that at the very least he could write Benny more frequently.47
Franklin did not find time to travel to Geneva, but he did compose for him one of his didactic little essays that proclaimed the virtues of education and diligence. Those who study hard, he wrote, “live comfortably in good houses,” whereas those who are idle and neglect their schoolwork “are poor and dirty and ragged and ignorant and vicious and live in miserable cabins and garrets.” Franklin liked the lesson so much that he made a copy and sent it to Sally, who gushed that “Willy shall get it by heart.” Benny, on the other hand, did not even acknowledge receiving it. So Franklin sent him another copy and ordered him to translate it into French and send it back to assure he understood it.48
Finally, Benny found a friend who brought him out of his torpor: Samuel Johonnot, the grandson of Franklin’s Boston friend the Rev. Samuel Cooper. A “turbulent and factious” lad, he was expelled from the school in Passy, and Franklin arranged to send him to the Geneva academy. He was a smart student, placing first in the class and spurring Benny to come in a respectable third.
Socially, Johonnot’s effect on Benny was even more pronounced. He began to develop more of his family’s rebellious streak. At one point, a cat killed one of their pet guinea pigs, and they resolved to kill a cat, any cat, in revenge, which they did. Benny went to his first dance, which unnerved him so much that he was relieved when a fire across the street brought it to an abrupt end, but then he went to another dance and a third, where he enjoyed himself thoroughly. He wrote to his grandfather that he was now having fun, told of his butterfly-hunting and grape-harvesting expeditions, and was even so bold to hint that he would, after all, like a larger allowance. That, and a watch, “a good golden one.” It would be practical, he assured his grandfather, and he promised to take good care of it.
Franklin responded the way he had to Sally’s request for lace and feathers: “I cannot afford to give gold watches to children,” he wrote. “You should not tease me for expensive things that can be of little or no service to you.” He was also appalled when young Johonnot asked that he and Benny be allowed to come back to Paris. That elicited another stern admonition sent to Johonnot but directed at both boys: “It is time for you to think of establishing a character for manly steadiness.”49
It was an injunction that should have been addressed to his other grandson, Temple, who had gone to France to continue his own education but had neither enrolled in a college nor taken a course. Temple’s work for the American delegation was competent enough, but he spent most of his time hunting, riding, partying, and chasing women. Hoping to help him settle down with both a dowry and a job, Franklin proposed a marriage between his roguish grandson and the Brillons’ elder daughter, Cunégonde.
This was nothing new. An incorrigible but never successful matchmaker, Franklin was incessantly trying, usually with ironic half-seriousness, to marry off his children and grandchildren to those of his friends. This time, however, he was wholly serious, indeed earnestly plaintive. His letter making the formal proposal, awkwardly written in a French that was uncorrected by his friends, declared that Madame Brillon was a daughter to him and expressed hope that her daughter would become one as well. He said that Temple, whom the Brillons called Franklinet, had agreed to the proposal, especially after Franklin promised to “remain in France until the end of my days” if the marriage took place. After repeating his desire to have children nearby “to close my eyes when I die,” he went on to extol the virtues of Temple, “who has no vices” and “has what it takes to become, in time, a distinguished man.”
Knowing Temple well, the Brillons may not have fully agreed with that assessment. They certainly did not agree to the marriage proposal. The main excuse they gave was that Temple was not a Catholic. That gave Franklin an opening to write, as he had often done before, about the need for religious tolerance and how all religions had at their core the same basic principles. (Among the five he listed in his letter was his own oft-stated religious credo, “The best service to God is doing goo
d to men.”)
Madame Brillon agreed, in her reply, that “there is only one religion and one morality.” Nevertheless, she and her husband refused to assent to the marriage. “We are obliged to submit to the customs of our country,” she said. M. Brillon was looking to retire from his position as a tax receiver-general and wanted a son-in-law who could succeed him. “This position is the most important of our assets,” she wrote, ignoring that she had frequently complained to Franklin that she was trapped in an arranged marriage made for financial reasons. “It calls for a man who knows the laws and customs of our country, a man of our religion.”
Franklin realized that M. Brillon’s objections might be caused by something more than merely Temple’s religion. “There may be other objections he has not communicated to me,” he wrote Madame Brillon, “and I ought not give him trouble.” For his part, Temple embarked on a year-long series of affairs with women high and low, including a French countess and an Italian, until suddenly falling in love, albeit briefly, with the Brillons’ younger daughter, who was only 15. This time M. Brillon seemed ready to approve of the alliance, and even offered a job and dowry, but the fickle Temple had already moved on to other women, including a married mistress who would, eventually, end up making him the third generation of Franklins to bear an illegitimate son.50
Chapter Fifteen
Peacemaker
Paris, 1778–1785
Minister Plenipotentiary
By the summer of 1778, it had become clear to all three American commissioners that there should be only one person in charge. Not only was it difficult for the three of them to agree on policies, Franklin told the Congress, but it was now even difficult for them to work in the same house together. Even their servants were quarreling. In addition, the French had appointed a minister plenipotentiary to America, and protocol demanded that the new nation reciprocate with an appointee of similar rank. Arthur Lee nominated himself and conspired with his brothers to win the prize. John Adams more graciously suggested to friends that Franklin, despite his work habits and softness toward France, would be best. Franklin did not overtly push for the job, but he did strongly ask the Congress, in July 1778, to “separate us.”
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Page 44