The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (82 page)

Not content with editing man, Franklin marked up God. The Lord’s Prayer, in Franklin’s rendering, became:

Heavenly Father, may all revere thee, and become thy dutiful children and faithful subjects. May thy laws be obeyed on Earth as perfectly as they are in Heaven. Provide for us this day as thou has hitherto daily done. Forgive us our trespasses, and enable us likewise to forgive those that offend us. Keep us out of temptation, and deliver us from evil.

Franklin glossed his revision with arguments literary, historical, and theological. “Heavenly Father” replaced “Our Father which art in heaven” because the former was “more concise, equally expressive, and better modern English.” “Lead us not into temptation” gave way to “Keep us out of temptation” because the former reflected an outdated view of the relationship of God to man. “The Jews had a notion that God sometimes tempted, or directed or permitted the tempting of people. Thus it was said he tempted Pharoah; directed Satan to tempt Job; and a false prophet to tempt Ahab; &c. Under this persuasion it was natural for them to pray that he would not put them to such severe trials. We now suppose that temptation, so far as it is supernatural, comes from the Devil only.” To blame God for temptation was unworthy of Him.

Among
his other distractions, Franklin continued to pursue his land schemes. His modest success in Nova Scotia having whetted his appetite, he looked again to the far greater rewards to be anticipated in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Compared to cold Nova Scotia, the heartland of the continent was warm and welcoming; the one essential thing
that prevented settlement there was the presence of Indian tribes unreconciled to the loss of their ancestral lands (or, in some cases, lands they had taken from other tribes’ ancestors). This military barrier was what had prompted the legal barrier thrown up by the Proclamation of 1763; it seemed fair to assume that should the first be removed, the second would fall in turn. Indeed, the government in London had indicated a readiness to move the Proclamation Line west should a settlement be reached with the Indians.

Just such a settlement took tentative place in the autumn of 1768. At Fort Stanwix, on the New York frontier, governors William Johnson of New York and William Franklin of New Jersey met with some three thousand Indians to negotiate a treaty and the sale of lands to the English. The transaction was complicated—but very promising for William Franklin, who attended both as the representative of his province and as a personal empire-builder. He and some partners from New Jersey purchased 30,000 acres in Albany County, New York. With another group he acquired rights to a separate 100,000 acres. And he helped supervise the transfer of 1.8 million acres to a motley collection of hopefuls calling themselves the “Suffering Traders”—the principal suffering of whom consisted of so-far-disappointed dreams of vast wealth. The whole arrangement was tied to the treaty between the representatives of the Indians and the British Crown; approval of the treaty would signify approval of the land sales.

William Franklin knew just the man for help getting the treaty approved, and his father, shortly apprised of the details and invited to join in the prospective rewards, was more than happy to oblige. In the spring of 1769 Franklin met with two of the Suffering Traders (whose suffering seemed materially diminished by the Fort Stanwix deal) to plot political strategy. Franklin fully realized by now that nothing passed through the British government on its merits; what counted was friends. He advised the Traders to broaden their partnership to include individuals influential at court and in Parliament. With such sponsorship their project stood a chance of approval; without it, none.

Among those added to the list, the most prominent were Thomas and Richard Walpole, nephews of the great Robert Walpole; and Thomas Pitt, nephew of Chatham. In honor of the Walpoles, the bruited partnership became known as the Walpole Company colloquially, although officially it was denominated the Grand Ohio Company. Upon reconsideration of the politics and economics of the project, Franklin and the others proposed to petition the Crown for the right to purchase
2.4 million acres in the territory included under the terms of the Fort Stanwix treaty; the land would be divided into 60 shares of 40,000 acres each, which would be distributed among the participants or sold to additional partners.

Franklin took it upon himself to find those additional partners. He started at the top, or as close as seemed feasible. He approached Grey Cooper, Grafton’s deputy at the Treasury, with an appeal to profit and posterity. “An application being about to be made for a grant of lands in the territory on the Ohio lately purchased of the Indians,” Franklin wrote Cooper, “I cannot omit acquainting you with it and giving you my opinion that they will very soon be settled by people from the neighbouring provinces, and be of great advantage in a few years to the undertakers.” Franklin had met Cooper’s children. “I wish for their sakes you may incline to take this opportunity of making a considerable addition to their future fortunes.” The expense would be a “trifle”: £200 for 40,000 acres. He pressed to close the deal: “If therefore you will give me leave, I shall put your name down among us for a share.”

While Cooper
considered the offer, Franklin pondered his own posterity, for even as he wrote this letter he was awaiting his first legitimate grandchild. Franklin had grown accustomed to the marriage of Sally to Richard Bache—but slowly. For many months he refused to answer Bache’s letters; when he finally got around to writing back he explained that in light of Bache’s financial problems he had considered the marriage “very rash and precipitate.” “I could not therefore but be dissatisfied with it, and displeased with you whom I looked upon as an instrument of bringing future unhappiness upon my child.” In this frame of mind he had deliberately not written. “I could say nothing agreeable; I did not choose to write what I thought, being unwilling to give pain where I could not give pleasure.” But his anger had subsided. “Time has made me easier.” He now chose to be encouraged by reports of improving prospects in the Bache business and urged his son-in-law to industrious application, whereby past losses might be retrieved. “I can only add at present that my best wishes attend you, and that if you prove a good husband and son, you will find in me an affectionate father.”

A happy marriage for his daughter mattered more to Franklin the older he got, for he suspected he would not live much longer. A letter to
Debbie written two weeks before his sixty-third birthday—a letter in which he expressed pleasure that Debbie found much to approve of in Bache—contained an assessment of Franklin’s physical condition and his expectations regarding the future. He suffered a “touch of the gout” but otherwise was in good health. Yet he did not flatter himself that he would live to a great age. “I know that men of my bulk often fail suddenly; I know that according to the course of nature I cannot at most continue much longer, and that the living of even another day is uncertain. I therefore now form no scheme but such as are of immediate execution.”

Yet grandchildren held out the prospect of immortality, after an earthly fashion. Franklin had one grandchild already, of course: William’s son, Temple. What inheritance the child might claim was problematic; as yet even his father did not acknowledge him. Temple was six at the beginning of 1769, and that January, William suggested a roundabout way of bringing the boy into the family. Franklin talked of returning to America come spring; could he bring Temple along? “He might then take his proper name and be introduced as the son of a poor relation, for whom I stood godfather and intended to bring up as my own.”

That situation would have to sort itself out; before it did, Sally brought into the world a grandchild the family could openly delight in. Even William, who might have been expected to have at least mildly mixed feelings about his half sister’s child, registered pleasure in “my little nephew,” as he wrote in introducing Benjamin Franklin Bache to his grandfather. “He is not so fat and lusty as some children at his time are, but he is altogether a pretty little fellow, and improves in his looks every day.” The boy’s grandmother told her husband, “Every body says he is much like you.”

Franklin
had to take Debbie’s word on the subject. Although he constantly talked about returning home—especially in letters to her—he stayed in London. The marriage of his daughter did not bring him home, nor the arrival of his grandson.

Not even a serious illness in Debbie drew him back across the Atlantic. During the winter of 1768–69 Debbie suffered a stroke that slurred her speech and erased her memory. Although she recovered somewhat, in June 1769 a Philadelphia doctor friend, Thomas Bond,
wrote Franklin that “her constitution in general appears impaired.” Bond added, “These are bad symptoms in advanced life and augur danger of further injury on the nervous system.”

Debbie’s affliction was evident in her letters to Franklin. Spelling and punctuation had always given her trouble, but now the very meaning of her sentences strayed and circled back upon itself. In her words on the pages before him, Franklin could trace her decline.

Yet he did not go home. In fairness, there was nothing he could have done at home to alleviate her condition. She would get better, God willing, or she would not, God unwilling. It was out of human hands.

All the same, had he been looking for a reason to leave London, this was more than he needed. His allies in the Pennsylvania Assembly would have understood, as would his friends in England. No one would have accused him of abandoning his post.

But he
was not looking for a reason to go home; he was looking for reasons to stay. And he did not have to look far. He hoped to win approval of the land schemes he and William had been pushing; success was hardly assured, but it appeared more likely than ever. Yet success was a delicate flower that required constant cultivation, especially in the demanding environment of political London; to leave now would jeopardize years of work and dreams. The possibility of a choice appointment to government remained a tantalizing possibility. Franklin eschewed ambition, but for the runaway from Boston to culminate his career in a distinguished position in the imperial capital would be most satisfying. As Poor Richard might have said, plums don’t fall far from the tree; for Franklin to depart London would eliminate any chance of his catching one.