The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (24 page)

As usual with Franklin, the twist wound to the heart of the argument. Readers needed to remember that printing was a business, not that different from any other. Smiths dealt in iron, cobblers in leather, printers in opinions. Yet this was what got the printers in trouble. “Hence arises the peculiar unhappiness of that business, which other callings are no way liable to; they who follow printing being scarce able to do any thing in their way of getting a living which shall not probably give offence to some, and perhaps to many, whereas the smith, the shoemaker,
the carpenter, or the man of any other trade may work indifferently for people of all persuasions without offending any of them; and the merchant may buy and sell with Jews, Turks, heretics and infidels of all sorts, and get money by every one of them, without giving offence to the most orthodox.” If other tradesmen were required to vouch for the convictions of their customers, there would be little trade transacted. So with printers. “If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”

Franklin remarked that in fact much presented to him did not find its way into his paper. Here he cited a couplet from one of the more forgettable books the Junto had recently received from London:

Poets lose half the praise they would have got
Were it but known what they discreetly blot.

He regularly refused anything that might promote vice or other immorality; likewise letters and articles that might do real injury to individuals.

Occasionally something slipped through—as with that which occasioned this defense of printers. Franklin had published an advertisement of a ship about to sail for Barbados; appended to the notice was an N.B.: “No Sea Hens nor Black Gowns will be admitted on any terms.” Franklin, busy as usual, paid little attention to the wording of what, in any event, was obviously someone else’s copy. “I printed it, and received my money, and the advertisement was stuck up round the town as usual.”

At once Franklin found himself excoriated for malice against the clergy and religion. “Black gowns” was an unmistakable reference to priests of the Church of England; sea hens were raucous birds with whom no decent person would wish to be associated.

Franklin conceded error in printing the line. He knew what “black gowns” referred to, although he said he had never encountered “sea hens” before. Could he do the thing over, he would refuse to print the notice. “However, ’tis done and cannot be revoked.” In his defense he adduced some mitigating factors: that he harbored no ill will toward those allegedly slandered, and in fact claimed customers and friends among the Anglican clergy; that he had printed more than a thousand advertisements since opening shop, and this was the first that had given such offense; that if he had intended injury against the clergy, this was an exceedingly foolish way to accomplish it, as the backlash demonstrated;
and—not incidentally—“that I got five shillings by it” and “that none who are angry with me would have given me so much to let it alone.”

He recited a fable illustrating his predicament:

A certain well-meaning man and his son were travelling towards a market town, with an ass which they had to sell. The road was bad, and the old man therefore rid [rode], but the son went afoot. The first passenger they met asked the father if he was not ashamed to ride by himself and suffer the poor lad to wade along through the mire; this induced him to take up his son behind him. He had not travelled far when he met others, who said they were two unmerciful lubbers to get both on the back of that poor ass, in such a deep road. Upon this the old man gets off and let his son ride alone. The next they met called the lad a graceless, rascally young jackanapes to ride in that manner through the dirt while his aged father trudged along on foot; and they said the old man was a fool for suffering it. He then bid his son come down and walk with him, and they travelled on leading the ass by the halter; till they met another company, who called them a couple of senseless blockheads for going both on foot in such a dirty way when they had an empty ass with them, which they might ride upon. The old man could bear no longer. My son, he said, it grieves me much that we cannot please all these people. Let us throw the ass over the next bridge, and be no farther troubled with him.

Franklin noted that should the old man have been seen acting on this resolution, he would have been judged even more the fool for trying to please everyone. “Therefore, though I have a temper almost as complying as his, I intend not to imitate him in this last particular. I consider the variety of humours among men, and despair of pleasing everybody; yet I shall not therefore leave off printing. I shall continue my business. I shall not burn my press and melt my letters.”

Franklin’s
slip with the sea hens and the black gowns caused him to be more circumspect but no less energetic in soliciting the business of all and sundry. On the contrary, he reached out in every direction he could imagine. He printed notices in Welsh for his small Welsh
readership and in German for the larger German community growing up in Pennsylvania. For the latter group he went so far as to launch an entire newspaper in German. Unfortunately, the combination of Germans and their money had yet to yield the critical mass necessary to sustain a paper, and the
Philadelphische Zeitung
expired after two issues.

The
Gazette
advertised a diverse array of goods and services. “A considerable quantity of fresh drugs just imported from London are to be sold in large or small parcels,” announced Samuel Chew and Thomas Bond, who kept a shop on Market Street near the market. “Where also may be had most kinds of chemical and galenical medicines duly and honestly prepared, all at very reasonable prices.” The Davis family proposed to sell “a plantation containing 400 acres of very good land … about 120 acres of cleared land, with a good dwelling house, a large barn and a good orchard, a good meadow ready made, and more may be made; the said tract of land may be made into three settlements.” John Parsons offered “a very good new brick house well finished, thirty foot front, two story high, besides a very large cellar, and garret, a good new brick kitchen, stable, and a large garden.”

The traffic in labor was equally lively. “A boy about four years of age to be bound out till he is twenty-one, and a likely young woman’s time to be disposed of, for between two and three years,” advertised Thomas Parry and Isaac Williams, overseers of the poor for the city of Philadelphia. Franklin, either for himself or for a patron who wished to remain anonymous, offered “a likely servant maid’s time for four years…. She works well at household work, and with her needle.”

Traffic in labor included traffic in slaves. “To be sold by Capt. Palmer, two young likely Negro men, country born, bred up in a farm, and can do all manner of plantation work.” Another ship’s captain, Thomas James, advertised “a young Spanish Indian woman … about 20 years of age, and very fit for all household business.”

In later life Franklin would come to view slavery as a pernicious institution incompatible with justice, humanity, or emerging republican values. But in the 1730s, at a time when slavery existed in all of England’s American colonies, when none but the most radical Quakers considered it exceptional, and when bound labor included large numbers of whites as well as blacks (although the whites were bound for a fixed term rather than life), Franklin’s conscience apparently pained him little on the subject. Even as the
Gazette
carried advertisements for slaves, he participated in the slave trade himself, quite matter-of-factly. “To be sold: A likely Negro girl, about 14 years of age, bred in the country but fit for either
town or country business. Enquire of the printer hereof.” On another occasion he offered “a likely young Negro fellow, about 19 or 20 years of age…. He is very fit for labour, being used to plantation work, and has had the small-pox.” And again: “A very likely Negro woman aged about thirty years who has lived in this city from her childhood and can wash and iron very well, cook victuals, sew, spin on the linen wheel, milk cows, and do all sorts of house-work very well. She has a boy of about two years old, which is to go with her…. And also another very likely boy aged about six years who is the son of the abovesaid woman. He will be sold with his mother, or by himself, as the buyer pleases.”

Other notices were more personal. “Whereas Christiana, the wife of John Rubbel of Lancaster County, hath eloped herself from her said husband, and left five young children at home with their father her said husband, these are to give notice to all manner of people that they give no credit nor trust for any manner of goods to the said Christiana on account or with expectation to make any demand on her said husband for anything she buyeth.” Nathaniel Lamplugh gave similar notice when his wife Abigail ran off: “He will not pay any debts she may contract.”

Masters regularly posted notices of runaway servants. Thomas Mills offered a twenty-shilling reward for “a servant man named John Homer, by trade a shoemaker, of short stature, pale complexion, one of his feet hath been half cut off, and three toes off the other. He had on a light double-breasted coat with light-coloured buttons, and he rode on a small dark bay horse.” Christian Grassholt promised a similar reward for “a Dutch servant man, by trade a tailor, talks little or no English, named Hans Wulf Eisman, no hair, about 22 years old, wears a white cap under his felt-hat, white hatband, an old olive-green duroy coat, one sleeve a little torn, a black cloth waistcoat and breeches, white yarn stockings and dark stockings, square-toed shoes with large brass buckles, coarse linen shirt.”

Sometimes it was the inanimate that got away. “Lost on Tuesday night last, on the road between Marcus Hook and Chester, a pocket book with 30s. money and some notes. The finder is desired to leave the book and notes with the printer hereof, and take the money for his pains.”

Useful or simply curious facts filled the odd column-end. “The small-pox has now quite left this city. The number of those that died here of that distemper is exactly 288 and no more. 64 of the number were Negroes; if these may be valued one with another at £30 per head, the loss to the city in that article is near £2000.” “From Newcastle we hear that on Tuesday the 8th instant, the lightning fell upon a house within a
few miles of that place, in which it killed 3 dogs, struck several persons deaf, and split a woman’s nose in a surprizing manner.”

When he took over the
Gazette
from Samuel Keimer, Franklin had promised entertainment as well as information. The two were hard to tease apart on those slow news days when he retailed the latest gossip.

Sure some unauspicious cross-grained planet, in opposition to Venus, presides over the affairs of love about this time. For we hear that on Tuesday last, a certain C-n-table having made an agreement with a neighboring female, to
watch
with her that night, she promised to leave a window open for him to come in at; but he going his rounds in the dark, unluckily mistook the window, and got into a room where another woman was in bed, and her husband it seems lying on a couch not far distant. The good woman perceiving presently by the extraordinary fondness of her bedfellow that it could not possibly be her husband, made so much disturbance as to wake the good man; who finding somebody had got into his place without his leave, began to lay about him unmercifully; and ’Twas thought that had not our poor mistaken gallant called out manfully for help (as if he were commanding assistance in the king’s name) and thereby raised the family, he would have stood no more chance for his life between the wife and husband than a captive l[ouse] between two thumb nails.

In the spirit of Silence Dogood and Caelia Shortface, Franklin fabricated letters to the editor. Anthony Afterwit related how his father-in-law had tricked him out of a £200 dowry he had been led to expect, and how his wife, taking after her father, had gulled him into spending the two of them into debt on a lifestyle well beyond their means. Only after his wife had gone to visit relatives had he regained control of himself; he dismissed their maid, sold their fine furniture, traded their ornate clock for an honest hourglass and their pacing mare for a milk cow. He had not yet told her of the changes, however—which was why he was writing to the
Gazette.
“I expect my Dame home next Friday, and as your paper is taken in at the house where she is, I hope the reading of this will prepare her mind for the above surprizing revolutions.”

Alice Addertongue was of the direct lineage of Busy Body. As her own existence was rather quiet (“I am a young girl of about thirty-five, and live at present with my mother”), she relied for entertainment on the
follies of others, which she duly repeated to any who would listen. “By industry and application, I have made myself the center of all the scandal in the province; there is little stirring but I hear of it.” Occasionally she encountered a person of whom no ill was spoken; this she attributed to defective intelligence, which she remedied at once. “If she is a woman, I take the first opportunity to let all her acquaintance know I have heard that one of the handsomest or best men in town has said something in praise either of her beauty, her wit, her virtue, or her good management.” This invariably evoked observations on the faults of the woman in question. “To the same purpose, and with the same success, I cause every man of reputation to be praised before his competitors in love, business, or esteem on account of any particular qualification.” Particular occupations facilitated her task. Politics, for example, brought forth if not the worst in men, at least the worst in what people said about men. Recalling a recent golden moment of scandal, which she had recorded faithfully, she predicted that “whoever peruses my writings after my death may happen to think that during a certain term the people of Pennsylvania chose into all their offices of honour and trust the veriest knaves, fools and rascals in the whole province.” Miss Addertongue urged the editor of the
Gazette
to do his part in disseminating scandal; she predicted a doubling of subscriptions if he complied. To get him started, she included with her letter no fewer than sixteen items guaranteed to besmirch the reputations of those involved. The editor thanked her for her goodwill but declined to print them.