A Benjamin Franklin Reader

by Walter Isaacson

  People commonly speak of Ten Commandments. I have been taught that there are twelve. The first was, Increase and multiply and replenish the Earth. The twelfth is a new Commandment I give unto you, that ye 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, my dear Casuist, whether my keeping religiously these two commandments, though 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 neighbor’s wife, and which I confess I break constantly, God 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 and Affection,

  Your most obedient humble Servant

  A Proposed Treaty with

  Madame Brillon

  Franklin was not successful in turning their relationship into a sexual one. Madame Brillon retreated by insisting that she be more like a flirtatious child to him than a lover. Yet despite being unwilling to satisfy his ardor, she remained jealous whenever he flirted or spent evenings with other ladies. “When you scatter your friendship, as you have done, my friendship does not diminish, but from now on I shall try to be somewhat sterner to your faults,” she threatened. Franklin replied with a letter complaining that he got from her only small kisses and that he was able to share his affections without depriving her of any. He also used a salacious metaphor to describe how she had starved his “poor little boy” instead of making it “fat and jolly.”

  TO MADAME BRILLON, JULY 27, 1778

  What a difference, my dear friend, between you and me! You find my faults so many as to be innumerable, while I can see but one in you; and perhaps that is the fault of my spectacles. The fault I mean is that kind of covetousness, by which you would engross all my affection, and permit me none for the other amiable ladies of your country. You seem to imagine that it cannot be divided without being diminished: in which you mistake the nature of the thing and forget the situation in which you have placed and hold me.

  You renounce and exclude arbitrarily everything corporal from our amour, except such a merely civil embrace now and then as you would permit to a country cousin; what is there then remaining that I may not afford to others without a diminution of what belongs to you? The operations of the mind, esteem, admiration, respect, and even affection for one object, may be multiplied as more objects that merit them present themselves, and yet remain the same to the first, which therefore has no room to complain of injury. They are in their nature as divisible as the sweet sounds of the forte piano produced by your exquisite skill: twenty people may receive the same pleasure from them, without lessening that which you kindly intend for me; and I might as reasonably require of your friendship, that they should reach and delight no ears but mine.

  You see by this time how unjust you are in your demands, and in the open war you declare against me if I do not comply with them. Indeed it is I that have the most reason to complain. My poor little boy, whom you ought methinks to have cherished, instead of being fat and jolly like those in your elegant drawings, is meager and starved almost to death for want of the substantial nourishment which you his mother inhumanly deny him, and yet would now clip his little wings to prevent his seeking it elsewhere!

  I fancy we shall neither of us get any thing by this war, and therefore as feeling my self the weakest, I will do what indeed ought always to be done by the wisest, be first in making the propositions for peace. That a peace may be lasting, the articles of the treaty should be regulated upon the principles of the most perfect equity and reciprocity. In this view I have drawn up and offer the following, viz.

  ARTICLE 1.

  There shall be eternal peace, friendship and love, between Madame B. and Mr. F.

  ARTICLE 2.

  In order to maintain the same inviolably, Madame B. on her part stipulates and agrees, that Mr. F. shall come to her whenever she sends for him.

  ART. 3.

  That he shall stay with her as long as she pleases.

  ART. 4.

  That when he is with her, he shall be obliged to drink tea, play chess, hear music; or do any other thing that she requires of him.

  ART. 5.

  And that he shall love no other woman but herself.

  ART. 6.

  And the said Mr. F. in his part stipulates and agrees, that he will go away from Madame B’s whenever he pleases.

  ART. 7.

  That he will stay away as long as he please.

  ART. 8.

  That when he is with her he will do what he pleases.

  ART. 9.

  And that he will love any other woman as far as he finds her amiable.

  Let me know what you think of these preliminaries. To me they seem to express the true meaning and intention of each party more plainly than most treaties. I shall insist pretty strongly on the eighth article, though without much hope of your consent to it; and on the ninth also, though I despair of ever finding any other woman that I could love with equal tenderness: being ever, my dear dear friend,

  Yours most sincerely, B.F.

  Bagatelle of the Ephemera

  The frustration of their relationship evoked from Franklin one of his most wistful and self-revealing little tales, The Ephemera, written to her after a stroll in the garden. (The theme came from an article he had printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette fifty years earlier.) He called these stories bagatelles, the French term for a sprightly musical piece. He had happened to overhear, he wrote, a lament by one of the tiny short-lived flies who realized that his seven hours on this planet were nearing an end. He ends with a pun on her name.

  TO MADAME BRILLON, SEPTEMBER 20, 1778

  You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin-Joli, I stopped a little in one of our walks, and staid some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemere, all whose successive generations we were told were bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal tongues: my too great application to the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I listened thro curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures, but as they in their national vivacity spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their discourse. I found however, by some broken expressions that I caught now and then, they were disputing warmly the merit of two foreign musicians, one a cousin, the other a mosquito; in which dispute they spent their time seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life, as if they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! Thought I, you live certainly under a wise, just and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections or imperfections of foreign music. I turned from them to an old greyheaded one, who was single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I have put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company, and her heavenly harmony.

  It was, says he, the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flouri
shed long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin-Joli, could not itself subsist more than 18 hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived seven of those hours; a great age, being no less than 420 minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now, alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above 7 or 8 minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriots, inhabitants of this bush; or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! For in politics, what can laws do without morals! Our present race of ephemeres will in a course of minutes, become corrupt like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas, art is long, and life short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough, to nature and to glory: but what will fame be to an ephemere who no longer exists? And what will become of all history, in the 18th hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin-Joli, shall come to its end, and be buried in universal ruin? To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady-ephemeres, and now and then a kind smile, and a tune from the everamiable Brillante.

  Madame Helvétius and Elysian Fields

  Franklin’s other great female friend in Paris was Madame Helvétius, the widow of a noted French philosophe. She was a lively, outgoing and free-spirited bohemian who enjoyed projecting an earthy aura even at age 60. Franklin did more than flirt with her; by September of 1779, he was ardently proposing marriage in a way that was more than half-serious but retained enough ironic detachment to preserve their dignities. She led him on lightly. “I hoped that after putting such pretty things on paper,” she scrawled, “you would come and tell me some.” But she declined his marriage proposal, citing her loyalty to her late husband. That prompted Franklin to write her one of his most amusing bagatelles, Elysian Fields, in which he recounted a dream about going to heaven and discussing the matter with her late husband and his late wife, who had themselves married. Praising Madame Helvétius’s looks over those of his departed wife, he suggested they take revenge.

  TO MADAME HELVÉTIUS, DECEMBER 7, 1778

  The Elysian Fields

  Vexed by your barbarous resolution, announced so positively last evening, to remain single all your life in respect to your dear husband, I went home, fell on my bed, and, believing myself dead, found myself in the Elysian Fields.

  I was asked if I desired to see anybody in particular. “Lead me to the home of the philosophers.”

  “There are two who live nearby in the garden: they are very good neighbors, and close friends of each other.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Socrates and H———.”

  “I esteem them both prodigiously; but let me see first H———, because I understand a little French, but not one word of Greek.”

  He received me with great courtesy, having known me for some time, he said, by the reputation I had there. He asked me a thousand things about the war, and about the present state of religion, liberty, and the government in France.

  “You ask nothing then of your dear friend Madame H———; nevertheless she still loves you excessively and I was at her place but an hour ago.”

  “Ah!” said he, “you make me remember my former felicity. But it is necessary to forget it in order to be happy here. During several of the early years, I thought only of her. Finally I am consoled. I have taken another wife. The most like her that I could find. She is not, it is true, so completely beautiful, but she has as much good sense, a little more of Spirit, and she loves me infinitely. Her continual study is to please me; and she has actually gone to hunt the best Nectar and the best Ambrosia in order to regale me this evening; remain with me and you will see her.”

  “I perceive,” I said, “that your old friend is more faithful than you: for several good offers have been made her, all of which she has refused. I confess to you that I myself have loved her to the point of distraction; but she was hard-hearted to my regard, and has absolutely rejected me for love of you.”

  “I pity you,” he said, “for your bad fortune; for truly she is a good and beautiful woman and very loveable. But the Abbé de la R———, and the Abbé M———, are they not still sometimes at her home?”

  “Yes, assuredly, for she has not lost a single one of your friends.”

  “If you had won over the Abbé M———(with coffee and cream) to speak for you, perhaps you would have succeeded; for he is a subtle logician like Duns Scotus or St. Thomas; he places his arguments in such good order that they become nearly irresistible. Also, if the Abbé de la R———had been bribed (by some beautiful edition of an old classic) to speak against you, that would have been better: for I have always observed, that when he advises something, she has a very strong penchant to do the reverse.”

  At these words the new Madame H———entered with the Nectar: at which instant I recognized her to be Madame F———, my old American friend. I reclaimed to her. But she told me coldly, “I have been your good wife forty-nine years and four months, nearly a half century; be content with that. Here I have formed a new connection, which will endure to eternity.”

  Offended by this refusal of my Eurydice, I suddenly decided to leave these ungrateful spirits, to return to the good earth, to see again the sunshine and you. Here I am! Let us revenge ourselves.

  John Paul Jones

  One of Franklin’s duties in Paris was overseeing John Paul Jones, the brave and erratic sea commander who was conducting naval raids against Britain from a base in France. On one of these raids, Jones decided to kidnap a Scottish earl named Lord Selkirk, but the man was away, so the crew instead forced his wife to hand over the family silver. In a fit of noble guilt, Jones decided to buy the booty from his crew so that he could return it to the family. Franklin tried to help Jones resolve the problem, but it led to such a convoluted exchange of letters with the outraged earl that the silver was not returned until after the end of the war.

  Franklin was able to help secure for Jones, in February of 1779, an old 40-gun man-of-war named the Duras, which Jones rechristened the Bonhomme Richard in his patron’s honor. Jones was so thrilled that he paid a visit to Franklin’s home in the Paris suburb of Passy to thank Franklin and his landlord Chaumont, who had helped supply Jones with uniforms and funds. There was perhaps another reason for the visit: Jones may have been having an illicit affair with Madame de Chaumont.

  During this stay, an incident occurred that resembled a French farce. A wizened old woman, who was the wife of the Chaumonts’ gardener, alleged that Jones tried to rape her. Franklin made a passing allusion to the alleged incident in a postscript to a letter, and Jones mistakenly assumed that “the mystery you so delicately mention” referred to the controversy that surrounded his killing of a rebellious crewmember years earlier. So he provided a long and anguished account of that old travail.

  Franklin, bemused by Jones’s detailed explanation about impaling the mutineer, replied that he had never heard that story and informed Jones that the “mystery” he alluded to referred, instead, to an allegation made by the gardener’s wife that Jones had “attempted to ravish her” in the bushes of the estate. But Jones should not worry, Franklin said, because everyone at Pass
y found the tale to be the subject of great merriment. Madame Chaumont, whose own familiarity with Jones’s sexual appetites did not prevent her from a great display of French insouciance, declared that “it gave a high idea of the strength of appetite and courage of the Americans.”

  They all ended up concluding, Franklin assured Jones, that it must have been a case of mistaken identity. As part of the Mardi Gras festivities, a chamber girl had apparently dressed up in one of his uniforms and, so they surmised, attacked the gardener’s wife as a prank. It seems quite implausible that the gardener’s wife, even in the dimness of early evening, could have been so easily fooled, but the explanation was satisfactory enough that the event was not mentioned in subsequent letters.

  TO JOHN PAUL JONES, MARCH 14, 1779

  Dear Sir,

  I yesterday received your favor of the 6th. I did not understand from M. Alexander that Lord Selkirk had any particular objection to receiving the plate from you. It was general, that though he might not refuse it if offered him by a public body, as the Congress, he could not accept it from any private person whatever. I know nothing of m. Alexander’s having any enmity to you, nor can I imagine any reason for it. But on the whole it seems to me not worth your while to give yourself any farther trouble about Lord Selkirk. You have now the disposal of what belongs to the Congress; and may give it with your own share if you think fit, in little encouragements to your men on particular occasions…

  I have looked over the copy of my letter to you of February 24, not being able to imagine what part of it could give you the idea that I hinted at an affair I never knew. Not finding any thing in the letter, I suppose it must have been the postscript of which I have no copy; and which I know now that you could not understand, though I did not when I wrote it. The story I alluded to is this: l’abbé Rochon had just been telling me & Madame Chaumont that the old gardener & his wife had complained to the curate, of your having attacked her in the garden about 7 o’clock the evening before your departure; and attempted to ravish her, relating all the circumstances, some of which are not fit for me to write. The serious part of it was that three of her sons were determined to kill you, if you had not gone off; the rest occasioned some laughing: for the old woman being one of the grossest, coarsest, dirtiest & ugliest that one may find in a thousand, Madame Chaumont said it gave a high idea of the strength of appetite & courage of the Americans. A day or two after, I learnt that it was the femme de chambre of Mademoiselle Chaumont who had disguised herself in a suit I think of your clothes, to divert herself under that masquerade, as is customary the last evening of carnival: and that meeting the old woman in the garden, she took it into her head to try her chastity, which it seems was found proof.