A Benjamin Franklin Reader (35 page)

Franklin spent much of his first years in France coping with European supplicants who sought commissions to serve as officers in the American army. His collected letters are clogged with requests, more than 400 in all, some valiant and others vain. There was the mother who offered up three of her flock of sons, the Dutch surgeon who wanted to study bodies that had been blown apart, and the Benedictine monk who promised to pray for America if it would pay off his gambling debts. Franklin’s favorite was a less than effusive recommendation he received from a mother which began: “Sir, If in your America one knows the secret of how to reform a detestable subject who has been the cross of his family…”

Not all the supplicants were vagabonds. Franklin was able to find, among those seeking commissions, a few great officers to recommend: the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben (whose rank in the Prussian army Franklin inflated in his eagerness to get General Washington to take him), and Count Pulaski, a famed Polish fighter who became a heroic brigadier general for America. Nevertheless, Washington quickly grew testy about the number of aspiring officers Franklin was sending his way. “Our corps being already formed and fully officered,” he wrote, “every new arrival is only a source of embarrassment to Congress and myself and of disappointment and chagrin to the gentlemen who come over.”

So Franklin tried as best he could to reject most of the commission-seekers. To cope with the constant flood of requests—or perhaps merely to make fun of them—he even composed a form letter which he had printed up.

A
PRIL
2, 1777

Sir,

The Bearer of this who is going to America, presses me to give him a Letter of Recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his Name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes indeed one unknown Person brings me another equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this Gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his Character and Merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be; I recommend him however to those Civilities which every Stranger, of whom one knows no Harm, has a Right to, and I request you will do him all the good Offices and show him all the Favor that on further Acquaintance you shall find him to deserve. I have the honor to be, &c.

Among Franklin’s many reputations was that of a legendary and lecherous old lover who had many mistresses among the ladies of Paris. The reality was, truth be told, somewhat less titillating. His famed female friends were mistresses only of his mind and soul. Yet that hardly made their relationships less intriguing.

The first of these was with a talented and high-strung neighbor in Passy, Madame Brillon de Jouy, an accomplished musician who was noted for her performances on the harpsichord and the new pianos that were becoming fashionable in France. Madame Brillon, who was 33 when she met Franklin, was buffeted by conflicting passions and variable moods. Her husband, 24 years her senior (but 14 years younger than Franklin), was wealthy, doting and unfaithful. She had two daughters with beautiful singing voices and one of the most elegant estates in Passy, yet she was prone to fits of depression and self-pity. Although she spoke no English, she and Franklin exchanged more than 130 letters in French during their eight-year relationship, and she was able not only to enchant him but also to manipulate him.

Madame Brillon’s letters were suggestive. “I know my penitent’s weak spot, I shall tolerate it! As long as he loves God, America, and me above all things, I absolve him of all of his sins, present, past and
future.”
She went on to describe the seven cardinal sins, merrily noting that he had conquered well the first six, ranging from pride to sloth. When she got to the seventh, the sin of lust, she became a bit coy: “The seventh—I shall not name it. All great men are tainted with it…You have loved, my dear brother; you have been kind and lovable; you have been loved in return! What is so damnable about that?”

Franklin responded with his own revision of the Ten Commandments.

T
O
M
ADAME
B
RILLON
, M
ARCH
10, 1778

I am charmed with the goodness of my spiritual guide, and resign myself implicitly to her conduct, as she promises to lead me to heaven in a road so delicious, when I could be content to travel thither even in the roughest of all the ways with the pleasure of her company.

How kindly partial to her penitent, in finding him, on examining his conscience, guilty of only one capital sin, and to call that by the gentle name of a
foible!

I lay fast hold of your promise to absolve me of all sins past, present, and
future,
on the easy and pleasing condition of loving God, America, and my Guide above all things. I am in raptures when I think of being absolved of the future.

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

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.”

T
O
M
ADAME
B
RILLON
, J
ULY
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.

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.

T
O
M
ADAME
B
RILLON
, S
EPTEMBER
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 flourished 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.