A Benjamin Franklin Reader (49 page)

In the summer of 1771, Franklin was in a reflective mood. His mission as Pennsylvania’s lobbyist in London was not going well, and he was drifting away from his son, who was a royalist with social aspirations. On a visit to the Tudor country home of his friend Jonathan Shipley, an Anglican bishop, Franklin began the first installment of the most enduring of his literary efforts,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

“Dear son,” he began, casting his account as a letter to William, whom he had not seen for seven years. The epistolary guise gave him the opportunity to be chatty and casual in his prose. He pretended, at least initially, that this was merely a personal communication rather than a work of literature. “I used to write more methodically,” he said in a paragraph he inserted into the text after rereading some of the rambling genealogical digressions he had composed on the first day. “But one does not dress for private company as for a public ball.”

So was the autobiography really just for the private company of his son? No. It was clear from the outset that Franklin was writing for public consumption as well. The family information that would most interest his son was omitted completely: the identity and description of William’s own mother. Nor did Franklin write the letter on regular stationery; instead, he used the left half of large folio sheets, leaving the right half blank for revisions and additions.

At the beginning of his second day of writing, he stopped to make an outline of his entire career, showing his intention to construct a full memoir. He also, that second morning, used the blank right-hand columns of his first pages to insert a long section justifying the “vanity” of his decision to “indulge the inclination so natural in old men to be talking of themselves.” His goal, he declared, was to describe how he rose from obscurity to prominence and to provide some useful hints about how he succeeded, expressing hope that others might find them suitable to be imitated.

This was obviously directed at an audience beyond that of his son, who was already forty and the governor of New Jersey. There was, however, a subtext that was directed at him: William had taken on airs since becoming a governor, and he was far more enamored of the aristocracy and establishment than his father. The autobiography would be a reminder of their humble origins and a paean to hard work, thrift, shopkeeping values, and the role of a proud middle class that resisted rather than emulated the pretensions of the well-born elite.

For almost three weeks, Franklin wrote by day and then read aloud portions to the Shipleys in the evening. Because the work was cast as a letter, and because it was read aloud, Franklin’s prose took on the voice of a lovable old raconteur. Lacking in literary flair, with nary a metaphor nor poetic flourish, the narrative flowed as a string of wry anecdotes and instructive lessons. Occasionally, when he found himself writing with too much pride about an event, he would revise it by adding a self-deprecating comment or ironic aside, just as would a good after-dinner storyteller.

By the time he left for London, Franklin had finished about 40 percent of what would later be called
The Autobiography.
In Paris thirteen years later, just after the end of the American Revolution, he added another 10 percent of the work. His focus by then was on the need to build a new American character, and most of the section he wrote in 1784 was devoted to an explanation of the famous self-improvement project in which he sought to train himself in the thirteen virtues ranging from frugality and industry to temperance and humility. He began what would be the final installment in 1788, after he had returned to Philadelphia, and continued writing through May 1789, a year before his death.

The Autobiography
features Franklin’s most delightful literary creation: the portrait he painted of his younger self. With a mix of wry detachment and amused self-awareness, Franklin was able to keep his creation at a bit of a distance, to be modestly revealing but never deeply so. He included, amid all the enlightening anecdotes, few intimations of inner torment, no struggles of the soul nor reflections of the deeper spirit. More pregnant than profound, his recollections provide a cheerful look at a simple approach to life that only hints at the deeper meanings he found in serving his fellow man and thus his God. What he wrote had little pretension other than pretending to poke fun at all pretensions. It was the work of a gregarious man who loved to recount stories, turn them into down-home parables that could lead to a better life, and delve into the shallows of simple lessons.

To some, this simplicity is its failing. The great literary critic Charles Angoff declares that “it is lacking in almost everything necessary to a really great work of
belles lettres:
grace of expression, charm of personality, and intellectual flight.” But surely it is unfair to say that it lacks charm of personality, and as the historian Henry Steele Commager points out, its “artless simplicity, lucidity, homely idiom, freshness and humor have commended it anew to each generation of readers.” Indeed, read with an unjaundiced eye, it is a pure delight as well as an archetype of homespun American literature. And it was destined to become, through hundreds of editions published in almost every language, the world’s most popular autobiography.

In this age of instant memoirs, it is important to note that Franklin was producing something relatively new for his time. St. Augustine’s
Confessions
had mainly been about his religious conversion, and Rousseau’s
Confessions
had not yet been published. As Carl Van Doren points out, “his book was the first masterpiece of autobiography by a self-made man.” The closest model that he had, in terms of narrative style, was one of his favorite books, John Bunyan’s allegorical dream,
A Pilgrim’s Progress
that he had read at 14. But Franklin’s was the story of a very real pilgrim, albeit a lapsed one, in a very real world.

The Autobiography

Twyford, at the Bishop of St. Asaph’s, 1771

Dear Son,

I have ever had a pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made among the remains of my relations when you were with me in England, and the journey I undertook for that purpose. Now imagining it may be equally agreeable to some of you to know the circumstances of
my
life, many of which you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting a week’s uninterrupted leisure in my present country retirement, I sit down to write them for you. To which I have besides some other inducements. Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity, the conducing means I made use of, which with the blessing of God, so well succeeded, my posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own situations, and therefore fit to be imitated.

That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first. So would I if I might, besides correcting the faults, change some sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But though this were denied, I should still accept the offer. However, since such a repetition is not to be expected, the next thing most like living one’s life over again seems to be a
recollection
of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by the putting it down in writing.

Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men, to be talking of themselves and their own past actions; and I shall indulge it, without being tiresome to others, who, through respect to age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a hearing, since this may be read or not as any one pleases. And, lastly (I may as well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody), perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, “Without vanity I may say,” &c., but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.

And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to his kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them success. My belief of this induces me to hope, though I must not presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me, in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience as others have done: the complexion of my future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our afflictions.

The notes one of my uncles (who had the same kind of curiosity in collecting family anecdotes) once put into my hands, furnished me with several particulars relating to our ancestors. From these notes I learned that the family had lived in the same village, Ecton in Northamptonshire, for three hundred years, and how much longer he knew not (perhaps from the time when the name of Franklin, that before was the name of an order of people, was assumed by them as a surname when others took surnames all over the kingdom), on a freehold of about thirty acres, aided by the smith’s business, which had continued in the family till his time, the eldest son being always bred to that business; a custom which he and my father followed as to their eldest sons. When I searched the registers at Ecton, I found an account of their births, marriages and burials from the year 1555 only, there being no registers kept in that parish at any time preceding. By that register I perceived that I was the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations back. My grandfather Thomas, who was born in 1598, lived at Ecton till he grew too old to follow business longer, when he went to live with his son John, a dyer at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, with whom my father served an apprenticeship. There my grandfather died and lies buried. We saw his gravestone in 1758. His eldest son Thomas lived in the house at Ecton, and left it with the land to his only child, a daughter, who, with her husband, one Fisher, of Wellingborough, sold it to Mr. Isted, now lord of the manor there. My grandfather had four sons that grew up, viz.: Thomas, John, Benjamin and Josiah. I will give you what account I can of them, at this distance from my papers, and if these are not lost in my absence, you will among them find many more particulars.

Thomas was bred a smith under his father; but, being ingenious, and encouraged in learning (as all my brothers were) by an Esquire Palmer, then the principal gentleman in that parish, he qualified himself for the business of scrivener; became a considerable man in the county; was a chief mover of all public-spirited undertakings for the county or town of Northampton, and his own village, of which many instances were related of him; and much taken notice of and patronized by the then Lord Halifax. He died in 1702, January 6, old style, just four years to a day before I was born. The account we received of his life and character from some old people at Ecton, I remember, struck you as something extraordinary, from its similarity to what you knew of mine.

“Had he died on the same day,” you said, “one might have supposed a transmigration.”

John was bred a dyer, I believe of woolens. Benjamin was bred a silk dyer, serving an apprenticeship at London. He was an ingenious man. I remember him well, for when I was a boy he came over to my father in Boston, and lived in the house with us some years. He lived to a great age. His grandson, Samuel Franklin, now lives in Boston. He left behind him two quarto volumes, MS., of his own poetry, consisting of little occasional pieces addressed to his friends and relations, of which the following, sent to me, is a specimen.

He had formed a shorthand of his own, which he taught me, but never practicing it I have now forgot it. I was named after this uncle, there being a particular affection between him and my father. He was very pious, a great attender of sermons of the best preachers, which he took down in his shorthand and had with him many volumes of them. He was also much of a politician, too much, perhaps, for his station. There fell lately into my hands, in London, a collection he had made of all the principal pamphlets, relating to public affairs, from 1641 to 1717. Many of the volumes are wanting as appears by the numbering, but there still remain eight volumes in folio, and twenty-four in quarto and octavo. A dealer in old books met with them, and knowing me by my sometimes buying of him, he brought them to me. It seems my uncle must have left them here, when he went to America, which was about 50 years since. There are many of his notes in the margins.