The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (16 page)

Like most such attempts to prove the unprovable, Franklin’s effort revealed more about the author than about the subject. Indeed, it revealed
more about the author than he cared to have revealed. Although his employer, Palmer, was impressed by the ingenuity of Franklin’s argumentation, he decried Franklin’s conclusions as abominable. This reaction prompted Franklin to reconsider. In his autobiography he characterized various mistakes of his life as “errata”; regarding this episode he asserted, “My printing this pamphlet was another erratum.” Long before then he had burned all but the few copies already delivered to friends.

It was meaningful that Franklin said his
printing
the pamphlet, rather than the
reasoning
of the pamphlet, was the erratum. The pamphlet was a tour de force of logic, another indication of the emerging genius of the author. Some of its premises were open to question—which simply indicated that the genius was self-taught and lacked some life experience and the judgment it brings. But the reasoning placed Franklin on par with men much older than himself and more versed in the argumentative arts.

In time
he would recant his conclusions about the nonexistence of evil and futility of striving for happiness. But at the moment what bothered him was the bad impression his essay made. A young man alone in the world, dependent on the goodwill of others, could not afford the stigma of gross unorthodoxy, however grossly unorthodox his beliefs might be. A reader of the
Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity
could readily conclude that if the author were not already an atheist, he would be soon. God was less a real presence in this tract than a rhetorical device. In many ways London in the 1720s was more tolerant than Philadelphia, which in turn was more tolerant than Boston. But London’s tolerance had its limits, and Franklin was in no position to push them.

Others were, however, and they found much to praise in Franklin’s pamphlet. A surgeon named William Lyons, who in his spare time practiced philosophy, read Franklin’s essay and at once demanded to meet this brilliant young fellow. On doing so, he escorted Franklin to his favorite alehouse and introduced the lad to his circle of intellectual friends. Among these was Bernard Mandeville—“a most facetious entertaining companion,” in Franklin’s words—who had written
The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices Public Benefits.
This work outraged moralists and made Mandeville a minor hero among those who liked to tweak conventional conscience; not surprisingly, its author saw in Franklin a kindred spirit who might carry the fight forward. Another member of the circle was
Henry Pemberton, a friend of Isaac Newton. Pemberton delighted Franklin by promising to introduce him to the great scientist; he disappointed Franklin by failing to fulfill his promise.

Even as he gained a reputation as a philosophical wunderkind, Franklin made friends by his other gifts. One of his printing colleagues at Watts’s was a young man named Wygate, a lover of knowledge after Franklin’s heart and a bit of a linguist as well. But certain practical arts escaped him, including the art of swimming. He engaged Franklin to teach him and another friend. The pupils were apt and in a short time exhibited remarkable proficiency. Word spread of Franklin’s skill as a teacher and his prowess in the water; one day, returning by boat from Chelsea, several acquaintances insisted that Franklin demonstrate. He stripped, dove into the water, and put on a bravura performance. He showed off various strokes and positions, behaving, to all appearances, as though he had been born in the water. Matching the speed of the boat, he covered more than three miles before taking his watery bow.

After this feat word spread still farther about the talented American. A Sir William Wyndham sent for Franklin and offered a handsome fee for teaching his two sons, about to embark on a long journey, to swim. Franklin was flattered and said yes in principle, but a scheduling conflict prevented the lessons from actually taking place. Despite this disappointment, Franklin inferred that if he so wished, he might make a fair living introducing the sons of the gentry to water sports.

Meanwhile Franklin showed a knack for ingratiating himself to the fairer sex—or rather, considering his failure with James Ralph’s lover, to that segment of the sex that had once been fairer but now was less so. After leaving Palmer’s print shop for Watts’s, Franklin moved to a more convenient residence in Duke Street. His landlady was an elderly widow who reduced his rent on account of his being a strong young man whose presence might ward off intruders. She soon became smitten with Franklin. For his part, he found her delightful. She knew “1000 anecdotes as far back as the times of Charles the Second,” he explained. “She was lame in her knees with the gout, and therefore seldom stirred out of her room, so sometimes wanted company; and hers was so highly amusing to me that I was sure to spend an evening with her whenever she desired it.” The two would split an anchovy for dinner, laid out on a piece of bread with butter; they would wash this down with a shared pint of ale. As Franklin gradually formed a plan to return to Philadelphia, he desired to save money for his passage; he told her of cheaper lodgings he
knew where he would have to pay but two shillings per week. She would not hear of his leaving, and reduced his rent from three shillings six pence to one shilling six. He stayed.

In the garret of this same house lived another old woman, of seventy years and never married. A Roman Catholic, she had been sent abroad to become a nun—there being no nunneries in England since the time of Henry VIII. But her destination did not agree with her, and she returned home, resolved to be a conventless nun. She donated her inherited estate to the poor and learned to subsist on the scantest pension. Her diet consisted of gruel; the only fire she allowed herself in her chilly attic was that required to cook the gruel. Despite the deprivation, she was healthy and by all appearances quite content. Franklin found her a most pleasing conversationalist. He also found her an object lesson in the virtues of frugality—“another instance on how small an income life and health may be supported.”

Frugality was more on Franklin’s mind than ever as the months passed. London’s undeniable excitements lost their appeal upon continued exposure, and America beckoned. “I was grown tired of London, remembered with pleasure the happy months I had spent in Pennsylvania, and wished again to see it.” He began saving every farthing and seeking other means of speeding his return. One of his shipmates from the eastward passage, Thomas Denham, the Quaker merchant, explained that he was about to head back with a cargo of merchandise. Knowing Franklin to be an enterprising fellow with a good head, he offered to employ him as a clerk and potential partner. Initially Franklin would keep the books; later he might venture forth and earn commissions of his own. The prospect appealed to Franklin, both for the future profits and for the sooner arrival home. He quit his printing job at Watts’s and helped Denham gather his goods for export.

They shipped out
in late July 1726, aboard the
Berkshire, a
vessel in which Denham had a half share. Riding down the Thames, they anchored overnight at Gravesend, where Franklin took the opportunity to go ashore and inspect the countryside, which was agreeable and open, and meet the people, who were neither. “This Gravesend is a
cursed biting
place,” he recorded in his journal of the voyage, “the chief dependence of the people being the advantage they make of imposing upon strangers. If you buy any thing of them, and give half what they ask, you
pay twice as much as the thing is worth. Thank God we shall leave it tomorrow.”

The Gravesenders presumably would have disputed Franklin’s characterization; its significance lies less in its accuracy (or inaccuracy) than in the sharpness of its tone. This in turn follows from the fact that the journal of this voyage affords the student of Franklin’s life the first unedited, unfiltered rendition of Franklin’s voice. Save a couple of inconsequential notes, the journal is the oldest surviving work of Franklin’s hand written not for publication but for himself. Most of what is known of Franklin’s early years comes from his autobiography, which, like all memoirs, bears the imprint of subsequent experience, reflection, and reconsideration. Franklin the mature memoirist would have found cause to excuse the Gravesenders’ inhospitability; Franklin the twenty-year-old traveler did not even try.

Franklin’s opinions were not all as harsh as his view of Gravesend. From the Thames the ship turned south through the Strait of Dover.

Whilst I write this, sitting on the quarter-deck, I have methinks one of the pleasantest scenes in the world before me. ’tis a fine clear day, and we are going away before the wind with an easy pleasant gale. We have near fifteen sail of ships in sight, and I may say in company. On the left hand appears the coast of France at a distance, and on the right is the town and castle of Dover, with the green hills and chalky cliffs of England, to which we must now bid farewell. Albion, farewell!

Yet Albion would not release them so readily. For nearly a fortnight the wind blew hard from the west, forcing them to take refuge at various anchorages along England’s southern coast. The delay allowed Franklin the chance to examine the harbor and fortifications at Portsmouth, and to reflect on the nature of military leadership. A recently departed lieutenant governor of Portsmouth had fairly earned a reputation for severity in enforcing military discipline; for the slightest misdemeanor soldiers were thrown into the dungeon, called “Johnny Gibson’s Hole” when said martinet was beyond earshot. Franklin—with the self-assurance of his twenty years and utterly innocent of military life, beyond what he had read—pronounced that fear might indeed be required by lesser commanders to govern such rabble as commonly filled barracks. “But Alexander and Caesar, those renowned generals, received more faithful service, and performed greater actions by means of the
love their soldiers bore them, than they could possibly have done, if instead of being beloved and respected they had been hated and feared by those they commanded.”

Another delay allowed a tour of the Isle of Wight; here Franklin heard the tale of a local governor who had been esteemed a saint in most of his lifetime by nearly all men, but who turned out to have been a great villain. What struck Franklin was that the man’s true character had been discerned by a “silly old fellow” Franklin met, who currently kept the castle and otherwise had little sense about life. The moral? No man, though he possessed the cunning of a devil, could live and die a rogue yet maintain the reputation of an honest man; some slip, some accident, would give him away. “Truth and sincerity have a certain distinguishing native lustre about them which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame that cannot be painted.” While on the subject of reputation, Franklin noted a statue of Sir Robert Holmes, formerly governor of Wight, who built a monument to himself, with an autobiographical, and highly flattering, inscription. Franklin observed wryly, “One would think either that he had no defect at all, or had a very ill opinion of the world, seeing he was so careful to make sure of a monument to record his good actions and transmit them to posterity.”

On this same excursion Franklin and two others took a walk inland, then returned to the coast at nightfall, only to find themselves across a creek from their starting point. A boy operated a ferryboat during the day but now was in bed and refused to get up to put Franklin and his companions across. Franklin thereupon determined to commandeer the boy’s boat and do the job the “lazy whelp” should have done himself. Despite Franklin’s experience with watercraft, he and the others bungled the crossing, breaking an oar and thoroughly soaking and chilling themselves. As a belated gesture to the owner, they tied up the boat on the opposite shore, less the ruined oar.

Not till the twentieth day out from London did the
Berkshire
leave the Lizard—the promontory that marks England’s southmost point—and enter the open ocean. The Atlantic treated the vessel hardly better than the Channel had; the winds of August held stubbornly out of the west, making every league toward America a struggle. Franklin was in too much of a hurry, too much the improver, at this stage of his life to waste time playing games while ashore, but aboard the slow-moving vessel he joined the other passengers in whatever diversions came to hand. He developed a theory of draughts (checkers) that in turn revealed more of his thinking on human nature. “The persons playing, if they would play well,
ought not much to regard the
consequence
of the game, for that diverts and withdraws the attention of the mind from the game itself…. I will venture to lay it down for an infallible rule, that if two persons equal in judgment play for a considerable sum, he that loves money most shall lose; his anxiety for the success of the game confounds him.”