The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (88 page)

While preserving England from death by explosion, Franklin also strove to keep the English free from coughing themselves to pieces. At least since his early correspondence with Polly Stevenson he had been curious as to what caused colds. He was convinced to a moral and medical certainty that the conventional notion betrayed by the malady’s very name—that one caught cold by being cold—was quite mistaken. “Travelling in our severe winters, I have suffered cold sometimes to an extremity only short of freezing, but this did not make me
catch cold,”
he asserted to Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia friend and noted physician. Nor did moisture have much to do with the matter. “I have been in the river every evening two or three hours for a fortnight together, when one would suppose I might imbibe enough of it to
take cold
if humidity could give it; but no such effect followed. Boys never get cold [that is, catch cold] by swimming. Nor are people at sea, or who live at Bermudas, or St. Helena, where the air must be ever moist, from the dashing and breaking of waves against their rocks on all sides, more subject to colds than those who inhabit part of a continent where the air is driest.”

So what
was
the cause? “People often catch cold from one another when shut up together in small close rooms, coaches, &c. and when sitting near and conversing so as to breathe in each other’s transpiration.” Additional agents were bedclothes and other items that caught and somehow preserved “that kind of putridity which infects us.”

If close quarters contributed to colds, fresh air guarded against them—especially if the fresh air came in the course of outdoor exercise. Franklin was an early and ardent advocate of regular vigorous exercise. In a day when exercise for the upper classes often meant riding in a coach or sitting on a horse, Franklin devised a graduated—and remarkably modern—scale of physiological effort. William had written of a recent indisposition; his father told him to engage in exercise, which was “of the greatest importance to prevent diseases.” Franklin elaborated:

In considering the different kinds of exercise, I have thought that the
quantum
of each is to be judged of, not by time or distance, but by the degree of warmth it produces in the body. Thus when I observe if I am cold when I get into a carriage in a morning, I may ride all day without being warmed by it; that if on horse back my feet are cold, I may ride some hours before they become warm; but if I am ever so cold on foot, I cannot walk an hour briskly without glowing from head to foot by the quickened circulation.

I have been ready to say (using round numbers without regard to exactness, but merely to mark a great difference) that there is more exercise in
one
mile’s riding on horseback, than in
five
in a coach; and more in
one
mile’s walking on foot, than in
five
on horseback; to which I may add, that there is more in walking
one
mile up and down stairs, than in
five
on a level floor.

The two latter exercises may be had within doors, when the weather discourages going abroad [this of course defeated the fresh-air purpose of being outdoors, but some days were simply too nasty for that]. And the last may be had when one is pinched for time, as containing a great quantity of exercise in a handful of minutes. The dumb bell is another exercise of the latter compendious kind; by the use of it I have in forty swings quickened my pulse from 60 to 100 beats in a minute, counted by a second watch. And I suppose the warmth generally increases with quickness of pulse.

If Franklin’s study of exercise was strikingly modern, his observations in another area were almost ancient. Pliny had described how sailors soothed the angry sea by spreading oil on the waves; Franklin, in hours stolen from his apprenticeship to his brother James, had read Pliny’s account and wondered if it were truly so. Not till his voyage to England in 1757 had he managed to investigate the phenomenon. Then, observing that the wakes of two ships were remarkably smooth compared to the dozens of others in the convoy, he inquired of one of the old salts, who told him, with an air of disdain for such landlubbing ignorance, that the cooks in the two vessels must have dumped greasy water through the scuppers, which in turn greased the sides of the ships and thereby smoothed the waves.

Since then Franklin had pondered the subject further, collecting anecdotal evidence, devising conjectures, and considering how they might be tested. In time opportunity arose, in the form of a windy day on the pond of the common at Clapham, east of Lancaster, during his tour of northern England. “I fetched out a cruet of oil, and dropt a little of it on the water,” he wrote. “I saw it spread with surprising swiftness upon the surface.” But the sheen had scant effect in stilling the wind-driven waves, for he had oiled the water on the leeward side of the pond,
where the wind drove the oil back onto the bank. “I then went to the windward side, where they [the waves] began to form; and there the oil, though not more than a tea spoonful, produced an instant calm, over a space several yards square, which spread amazingly, and extended itself gradually till it reached the lee side, making all that quarter of the pond, perhaps half an acre, as smooth as a looking glass.”

Delighted and intrigued, Franklin determined to exploit every chance to investigate further. He placed a small quantity of oil in the upper hollow joint of a bamboo cane he carried when walking or riding in the country; at each opportunity he spilled the oil on ponds and streams and observed the effects. Gradually he conceived a quite ambitious experiment, one to quell not merely the ripples on a pond but the breakers on the open sea.

A captain in the Royal Navy, stationed at Portsmouth, heard of Franklin’s design and invited him to come test it. Accordingly, on a day in October 1772 when the wind was blowing toward the shore, a crew was sent out in a longboat beyond the breakers, there to pour oil from a large stone bottle onto the water. A team of observers was specially chosen to observe the waves and determine whether they diminished after application of the oil.

“The experiment had not in the main the success we wished, for no material difference was observed in the height or force of the surf upon the shore,” Franklin explained to an interested friend. Yet the oil did smooth the water somewhat behind the longboat, rendering the surface there largely immune to roughening by the brisk wind.

And in this Franklin saw both the cause for the present failure and the reason for success on smaller bodies of water. Waves on water, he said, resulted from friction between windy air and the surface of the water. Oil acted as a lubricant between air and water, diminishing the friction and the wave-raising power of the wind. On a pond, the entire surface might be covered with oil, entirely depriving the wind of its purchase and allowing a complete stilling. On the ocean, needless to say, any such comprehensive covering was out of the question; the waves that broke on the shore acquired their momentum long before encountering the oil from the longboat.

“It may be of use to relate the circumstances even of an experiment that does not succeed, since they may give hints of amendment in future trials,” Franklin remarked. He went on to suggest just such amendment. “If we had begun our operations at a greater distance [from shore], the
effect might have been more sensible. And perhaps we did not pour oil in sufficient quantity. Future experiments may determine this.”

Franklin’s
simultaneous experiments in pouring oil of the metaphorical sort on politically troubled waters were even less successful, and for a similar reason: the waves were originating beyond his reach.

Much of the turbulence was transatlantic. On their face, the affairs of the colonies were more placid than for some years. Franklin’s advocacy of continued nonimportation failed to persuade most American merchants, who decided to accept the partial victory of the partial repeal of the Townshend duties and retreat to a partial embargo—of tea, the still-dutied item. Boston held out longer for nonimportation than New York and Philadelphia, but finally Boston too abandoned the beyond-tea embargo. By then the furor over the Boston Massacre had quieted as well, partly because Governor Hutchinson nodded to prudence and withdrew the British troops from the city proper to island quarters in the harbor, and partly because the soldiers involved in the shooting were brought to trial. If Captain Preston and the others were initially nervous that their defense was directed by the well-known patriot John Adams, they could not complain at the verdict: Preston and six of his men were acquitted of all charges; the remaining two were found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder and were released with a brand on the hand. “There seems now to be a pause in politics,” Samuel Cooper wrote Franklin on the first day of 1771.

But a pause was not a halt, and beneath the surface calm, deep trouble impended. On the fundamental issue of constitutional relations, the Americans and the British were further apart than ever. Parliament claimed the right to legislate in all matters for the Americans; the American assemblies denied that right, with increasing fervor. At the moment Parliamentary rule rode lightly on American shoulders; but for the tax on tea they were choosing not to drink, the colonists hardly noticed. Yet the Declaratory Act remained on the statute books, and while it did it threatened to be the rock on which the empire would break.

Other sources of trouble were closer to Franklin’s current residence but hardly more within his reach. After Hillsborough’s unexpected hospitality in Ireland, Franklin decided to test the secretary’s good faith. “When I had been a little while returned to London,” he informed
William, “I waited on him to thank him for his civilities in Ireland, and to discourse with him on a Georgia affair.” It was as though the Irish interlude had never happened. “The porter told me he was not at home. I left my card, went another time, and received the same answer, though I knew he was at home, a friend of mine being with him. After intermissions of a week each, I made two more visits, and received the same answer.” The last occasion was a levee day, when a row of carriages lined the lane by Hillsborough’s door. “My coachman driving up, alighted and was opening the coach door, when the porter, seeing me, came out, and surlily chid my coachman for opening the door before he had enquired whether my lord was at home; and then turning to me, said, ‘My lord is not at home.’” Franklin concluded that whatever had motivated the secretary’s superficial kindness in Ireland had already failed. “As Lord Hillsborough in fact got nothing out of me, I should rather suppose he threw me away as an orange that would yield no juice, and therefore not worth more squeezing.”

Yet it was Hillsborough who was thrown away, not many months later. And though Franklin was hardly responsible, those who
were
responsible were allies of Franklin, which afforded Franklin fleeting satisfaction and Hillsborough lasting distress.

Unfortunately—to Franklin’s way of thinking—the issue that brought Hillsborough down was not the central one of constitutionalism but the peripheral one of land. Since falling out with Hillsborough in 1770, Franklin had retreated to the rear of efforts by the Walpole Company to win its western bonanza. Franklin had always been a small player in this large game; his value to the bigger bettors was the influence he wielded among those who could make the project or break it. By alienating Hillsborough he lost what influence he possessed; discretion dictated he step back.

Yet Hillsborough himself was alienating many people, as Franklin saw, and this group included some who took a growing interest in the Walpole Company. The prospective Ohio grandees infiltrated the government by the tested means of offering shares to ministers and friends of ministers. Hillsborough still opposed the scheme, but he was outmaneuvered, and when the Walpole-friendly Privy Council overruled Hillsborough’s Board of Trade and approved the land grant, the secretary of state (and president of the board) resigned.

“At length we have got rid of Lord Hillsborough,” Franklin reported to William. Franklin conceded that the Walpole question was the proximate cause of the secretary’s downfall, but the ultimate cause was Hillsborough’s
lack of friends, and excess of enemies, among his fellow ministers. Nor did his troubles stop there. “The King too was tired of him, and of his administration, which had weakened the affection and respect of the colonies for a royal government”—here Franklin could not resist a little self-congratulation, adding, “with which (I may say to you) I used proper means from time to time that his Majesty should have due information and convincing proofs.”

After Hillsborough anyone would have been an improvement. Lord Dartmouth certainly seemed so. The new secretary of state indicated that he much admired Franklin, and at an early levee made a special point of greeting Franklin ahead of a crowd of others. He said nothing about Franklin’s not having the approval of the Massachusetts governor but treated him like any fully accredited agent. “I hope business is getting into better train,” Franklin told Thomas Cushing.