  Some time early in 1766, a young man named Joseph Priestley, a dissenting minister and a teacher of classical languages in Warrington, Lancashire, came to see Franklin to ask his help for a history of electricity he was writing. Franklin gladly gave him assistance and told him of his kite experiment in more detail than he had done to anyone before. Impressed with Priestley’s scientific talents, he recommended him to membership in the Royal Society. Priestley more than fulfilled his expectations. A few years later he would discover oxygen—calling it by the cumbersome name of “dephlogistated air.” He also became a lifelong friend of the American colonies. Inevitably, the most brilliant scientists in England and the continent sought Franklin out and, except for a few jealous ones, were added to the circle of his friendships. Among the most intimate of these was John Pringle, whom he had met on his last English trip and who was now Sir John, personal Physician to England’s Queen. Samuel Johnson’s biographer, Boswell, once called on Pringle and found him and Franklin playing chess. Boswell wrote: “Sir John, though a most worthy man, has a peculiar sour manner. Franklin again is all jollity and pleasantry. I said to myself: Here is a prime contrast: acid and alkali.” With Pringle, Franklin took a trip to the continent in June 1766. They stayed first in Pyrmont, in what is now West Germany, a fashionable mineral springs resort. From there they visited GÖttingen, where the Royal Society of Sciences elected both to membership. They met Rudolf Erich Raspe, narrator of the famous tall tales of the adventures of Baron MÜnchausen. In their turn, Pringle and Franklin entertained their new friends with stories about the giant Patagonians of South America, which neither of them had of course ever seen. When Franklin later read the newspaper accounts of their voyage, he noted with amusement that the Patagonians had grown even taller in the hands of the press. A letter was waiting for him in London from Debby, saying that Sally wanted his consent to marry a young man named Richard Bache. Franklin was too far away to judge the merits of her suitor: “I can only say that if he proves a good husband to her, and a good son to me, he shall find me as good a father as I can be,” he wrote. The marriage took place in October 1767. The ships in the harbor in Philadelphia ran up their flags to celebrate the wedding of the daughter of their most famous citizen. The ministry of Lord Rockingham, in which Franklin had such confidence, toppled while he was in Germany. The King and William Pitt, now Lord Chatham, set up a coalition cabinet. Pitt, still a good friend of the American colonies, soon fell violently ill, during which time the reins of the government were seized by Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer. Townshend considered the whole colonial uproar over taxes “perfect nonsense.” Since the Americans had balked at the internal Stamp Tax, he resolved to let them pay external taxes, in the form of import duties on glass, lead, paper, paints—and tea. By the Townshend Acts, duties were to be collected by English revenue officers. The acts violated the time-honored right of trial by jury; those accused of ignoring the revenue laws were to be tried in the admiralty courts without a jury. As an added insult, the revenue collected was to be used for the salaries of royal governors and judges who previously had been paid by the Assemblies and thus subject to some colonial control. Franklin foresaw grave danger ahead. The Americans would not accept these harsh measures. “Every act of oppression will sour their tempers,” he wrote Lord Kames, “lessen greatly—if not annihilate ... the profits of your commerce with them, and hasten their final revolt; for the seeds of liberty are universally found there, and nothing can eradicate them.” He felt that the colonists’ affection for Britain was such that “if cultivated prudently” they might be easily governed “without force or any considerable expense.” But he did not see “a sufficient quantity of the wisdom that is necessary to produce such a conduct.” The lack of “a sufficient quantity of the wisdom” on the part of Parliament and the ministry was almost daily becoming more obvious to him. Still he continued his course of education and propaganda and persuasion, and of meeting with men in the government whom he hoped to influence. Many listened to him. The young and wealthy Earl of Shelburne, Secretary of State for the Colonies, became his close friend. In recognition of his usefulness to his country, in 1768 he was chosen agent for Georgia; in 1769, for New Jersey; and in 1770, for Massachusetts. Nearly every year he took a trip from London for his health and to refresh his mind. In the fall of 1767, he made his first visit to France, again in the company of his “steady, good friend,” Sir John Pringle. As a loyal subject of an England frequently at war with France, he was prejudiced in advance against “that intriguing nation,” as he called it. Even this first short visit led him to reverse his opinion. “It seems to be a point settled here universally that strangers are to be treated with respect,” he wrote Polly Stevenson. “Why don’t we practise this urbanity to Frenchmen? Why should they be allowed to outdo us in anything?” Already he was adopting French fashions. “I had not been here six days before my tailor and peruquier [wig maker] had transformed me into a Frenchman. Only think what a figure I make in a little bag-wig and naked ears! They told me I was become twenty years younger, and looked very galant.” In French scientific circles, his name was legendary. Scientists bragged that they were Franklinistes, a word they had coined. Thomas d’Alibard, the first to draw electricity from the skies, entertained him royally. At Versailles, he and Sir John were presented to Louis XV, whose praise of his electrical experiments Franklin could hardly have forgotten, and whom he found “a handsome man, has a very lively look, and appears younger than he is.” The King “talked a good deal to Sir John,” he wrote Polly, “asking many questions about our royal family; and did me too the honour of taking some notice of me. That’s saying enough, for I would not have you think me so much pleased with this king and queen as to have a whit less regard than I used to have for ours.” “Our king” to him was still George III. He thought Versailles badly kept up in spite of its splendor but was impressed with the way drinking water was kept pure by filtering it through cisterns filled with sand. It seemed as though every time he turned his back to London there were changes in the ministry. Townshend, who had done more than any man before him to turn the Americans into revolutionists, died in September 1767. He was succeeded by the Tory, Lord North, a pompous thick-lipped personage, who had neither the will nor the desire to improve colonial relations. William Pitt’s health was still poor. He collapsed in 1768 in the House of Lords, in the midst of a fiery attack on his government’s American policies. In the same year, the pleasant Lord Shelburne was succeeded by the Earl of Hillsborough, a master of hypocrisy in Franklin’s estimation, as Secretary of State for the Colonies. In America, the Massachusetts Assembly sent a letter to other colony assemblies, proposing united opposition to the Townshend Acts. Hillsborough demanded that they rescind their action or dissolve. The Assembly refused, and was backed by the other colonies. In October 1768, the British sent eight ships of war to try to compel Boston to pay the import taxes. Other ships followed. By one estimate the extra military expenses that year were five thousand times the amount which the Townshend Acts produced in revenue. Franklin had judged their stupidity rightly. In the midst of the American protests against these acts, he was entertained by the Lord Chancellor Lord Bathurst and Lady Bathurst. He brought them a gift of American nuts and apples. With an irony that his lordship could not have missed, he prayed them to accept his present “as a tribute from the country, small indeed but voluntary.” The nuts and apples had come from Debby, who also sent him such American products as corn meal, buckwheat flour, cranberries and dried peaches. That year young Christian VII of Denmark visited England, and insisted that Franklin dine with him at St. James. He would not have been human had he not recalled the proverb of Solomon which his father had so frequently quoted in his childhood. Now he had not only stood before one king, Louis XV, he had sat down with a second. There would be others. The English tried for two more years to make the colonists pay duties they did not want to pay. At last, on March 5, 1770, Parliament voted unanimously to repeal all of them but the tax on tea. Franklin commented dryly that repealing only part of the duties was as bad surgery as to leave splinters in a wound “which must prevent its healing.” In Boston on that same day a squad of British soldiers fired into a crowd which had been pelting them with snowballs—killing five and wounding six. The “Boston Massacre” became a cause cÉlÈbre. Bloodshed had been added to the other colony grievances. The next summer Franklin visited Ireland. In Dublin, he attended two sessions of the Irish Parliament. The Speaker introduced him as “an American gentleman of distinguished character and merit,” and he was given a place of honor. He noted that the Irish Parliamentarians were more cordial than their English counterparts, but was too astute not to realize they did not really represent their own people. Ireland, like America, had suffered under British oppressive measures, but more intensely and longer. The appalling misery of the Irish people was a moral lesson to him. He foresaw that if the colonists did not continue to insist on their rights, they would suffer the same wretched fate. Sally’s husband, Richard Bache, came to England that fall to meet his famous father-in-law. Bache had set his heart on getting a political appointment and had brought a thousand pounds in case he would have to pay for it. Even members of the House of Commons bought their posts, a practice which was responsible for much of the corruption and inefficiency of the government. Franklin advised his son-in-law to stay clear of politics. “Invest your money in merchandise. Start a store in Philadelphia. You will be independent and less subject to the caprices of superiors.” Bache followed this advice and within a few years was one of Pennsylvania’s most respected merchants. That year Lord Hillsborough, with whom Franklin’s relations had been only outwardly civil, was succeeded by Lord Dartmouth, whom he liked. Again his hopes were raised for a cessation of hostilities. In truth, the ministry and Parliament had never treated him more cordially. “As to my situation here,” he wrote his son on August 19, 1772, “nothing can be more agreeable ... a general respect paid me by the learned, a number of friends and acquaintances among them with whom I have a pleasing intercourse ... my company so much desired that I seldom dine at home in winter and could spend the whole summer in the country houses of inviting friends if I chose it.... The king too has lately been heard to speak of me with great regard.” In a postscript he mentioned that the French Royal Academy had chosen him a foreign member, of which there were only eight. His Craven Street family was now enlarged to include his grandson William Temple Franklin, and a distant English cousin named Sally Franklin who was, like his daughter, an eager young girl “nimble-footed and willing to run errands and wait upon me.” Mrs. Stevenson continued to pamper him and nurse him during his spells of gout. Polly, for whom he always had great affection, was married to a young doctor, William Hewson. The young couple had been living with their mother since 1770. There were several weeks when Mrs. Stevenson was away, leaving Polly in charge. To amuse them, Franklin composed a newspaper, the Craven Street Gazette, reporting the daily household happenings as though they were world events. In this sheet, Mrs. Stevenson was “Queen Margaret,” Sally was “first maid of honor,” Polly and her husband were “Lord and Lady Hewson,” while he referred to himself as the “Great Person”—“so called from his enormous size.” When Debby wrote him of the cleverness of his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache, born in August 1769, Franklin responded with anecdotes about Polly’s first boy, whose godfather he was. Wherever he was, a rich family life was as essential to his happiness as food. Among his close friends was Jonathan Shipley, bishop of St. Asaph, at Twyford. “I now breathe with reluctance the smoke of London, when I think of the sweet air of Twyford,” he wrote after a visit there in June 1771. The bishop had five daughters and a son, and Franklin more or less adopted them all. To the Shipley girls he presented a gray squirrel which Debby had sent. They were thrilled with Skugg, as they named him. One day the squirrel escaped from his cage and was killed by a dog. The children buried him in their garden and Franklin composed his epitaph: Here Skugg Lies snug As a bug In a rug. At the Shipleys he wrote the first part of his famous Autobiography in the form of a letter to William. Another of his intimates was Lord Le Despencer, former chancellor of the exchequer, who in his youth was reputedly the “wickedest man in England.” Franklin found him a delightful companion and often stayed at his country place at Wycombe. “I am in this house,” he wrote William, “as much at my ease as if it was my own; and the gardens are a paradise. But a pleasanter thing is the kind countenance, the facetious and very intelligent conversation of mine host.” With Lord Le Despencer, the alleged “rake,” he wrote an Abridgement of the Book of Common Prayer, published in 1773. He was a frequent guest of Lord Shelburne, whose vast wooded estate was also at Wycombe. One windy day he gravely told the other visitors that he could quiet the waves on a small stream on the grounds. Ignoring their skeptical looks, he walked upstream, made some mysterious passes over the water, and waved his cane three times in the air. As he had prophesied, the waves quieted down and the stream became smooth as a mirror. His companions could not conceal their astonishment. Later he satisfied their curiosity. There was oil in the hollow joint of his cane. A few drops of it spread in a thin film over the water and caused the seeming miracle. Back of this trick was a great deal of serious study on the effects of pouring oil on troubled waters. In his youth he had read in Pliny how sailors of ancient Greece had smoothed a choppy sea in this manner. On one of his ocean crossings an old sea captain told him that Bermuda fishermen poured oil on rough waters so they could see the fish strike. Subsequently, he had made his own experiments, finding that one teaspoon of oil would calm a pond several yards across. If such a minute bit of oil would still a pond, would not several barrels of oil level out the surf, making it possible for boats to land with less danger? He tried out this theory the next year at Portsmouth, England. With a local sea captain he took off on a barge one windy day, sprinkling oil on the waves from a large stone bottle. The experiment was only partially successful. Oil did not diminish the height or force of the surf on the shore, but he had the satisfaction of seeing that where the oil had spread, the surface of the water was not wrinkled by smaller waves or whitecaps. His scientific and cultural interests were as varied as life itself. He was in turn occupied with the nature of mastodon tusks and teeth which a friend sent to London, with the transit of Venus, the causes of lead poisoning, population increase, geology, salt mines, Scottish tunes, whirlwinds and water-spouts, and the science of phonetics—the need of reforms to reduce the “disorderly confusion in English spelling”—and the curious fact that flies apparently drowned in a bottle of Madeira wine might sometimes be brought back to life. His observations on all these matters were published in Letters on Philosophical Subjects, and added to the fourth edition of “Experiments and Observations on Electricity.” Barbeu Dubourg, a Parisian printer, issued a French translation in two handsome volumes, which included “The Way to Wealth,” under the French title, “Le Moyen de s’Enricher.” Philadelphia, wrote Dubourg in his preface, was founded in the midst of the savages of America by William Penn, a man wiser than the Spartan hero Lycurgus. In less than a century the city had gone far beyond the ancient world in the practice of the purest virtues and the most useful arts. Benjamin Franklin, scientist, statesman, and sage, had now brought this heroic age to troubled Europe. The legend of Benjamin Franklin, which would mount to greater heights in France than anywhere else in the world, was already in the making. |
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