Chapter V: Part 5

Of questions of the household--of housekeeping and home-making--our American women have been supposed somewhat careless. Possibly this judgment over the sea has been builded upon our women’s vivacity, and a subtle intellectual force they possess, and also from their interest in affairs at large, and again from their careful and cleanly attention to their person--“they keep their teeth too clean,” says a much-read French author. Noting such characteristics, foreigners have jumped to the conclusion that American women are not skilled in works within doors. In almost every European country this is common report. “We German women are such devoted housekeepers,” said the wife of an eminent Deutscher, “and you American women know so little about such things!” “Bless your heart!” I exclaimed--or if not just that then its German equivalent--thinking of the perfectly kept homes from the rocks and pines of Maine to the California surf; “you German women with your little haushaltungen, heating your rooms with porcelain stoves, and your frequent reversion in meals to the simplicity of wurst and beer, have no conception of the size and complexity of American households and the executive capabilities necessary to keep them in orderly work. Yours is mere doll’s housekeeping--no furnaces, no hot water, no electricity, no elevators, no telephone, and no elaborate menus.”

Our American women are model housekeepers and home-makers, as thousands of homes testify, but the interests of the mistresses of these houses are broader, their lives are commonly more projected into the outer world of organized philanthropy and art than women’s lives abroad, and the apparent non-intrusion of domestic affairs leads foreigners to misinterpret their interest and their zeal. It is the consummate executive who can set aside most personal cares and take on others efficiently. Moreover, it is not here as where a learned professor declared: “Die erste Tugend eines Weibes ist die Sparsamkeit.”

To have a home in which daily duties move without noise and as like a clock as its human machinery will permit, and to have a table of simplicity and excellence, is worth a pleasure-giving ambition and a womanly ambition. It is to bring, in current critical phrase, three-fourths of the comfort of life to those whose lives are joined to the mistress of such a household--the loaf-giver who spends her brains for each ordered day and meal. Moreover, and greatest of all, to plan and carry on so excellent an establishment is far-reaching upon all men. It is the very essence of morality--is duty--_i.e._, service--and law.

The French aver that men of the larger capacity have for food a particularly keen enjoyment. Possibly this holds good for Frenchmen--for the author of Monte Cristo, or for a Brillat-Savarin, of whose taste the following story is told: “Halting one day at Sens, when on his way to Lyons, Savarin sent, according to his invariable custom, for the cook, and asked what he could have for dinner. ‘Little enough,’ was the reply. ‘But let us see,’ retorted Savarin; ‘let us go into the kitchen and talk the matter over.’ There he found four turkeys roasting. ‘Why!’ exclaimed he, ‘you told me you had nothing in the house! let me have one of those turkeys.’ ‘Impossible!’ said the cook; ‘they are all bespoken by a gentleman up-stairs.’ ‘He must have a large party to dine with him, then?’ ‘No; he dines by himself.’ ‘Indeed!’ said the gastronome; ‘I should like much to be acquainted with the man who orders four turkeys for his own eating.’ The cook was sure the gentleman would be glad of his acquaintance, and Savarin, on going to pay his respects to the stranger, found him to be no other than his own son. ‘What! you rascal! four turkeys all to yourself!’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Savarin, junior; ‘you know that when we have a turkey at home you always reserve for yourself the pope’s nose; I was resolved to regale myself for once in my life; and here I am, ready to begin, although I did not expect the honour of your company.’”

The French may say truly of the famous “high-priest of gastronomy.” And a story which has lately appeared in Germany tells of a sensitive palate in Goethe: “At a small party at the court of Weimar, the Marshal asked permission to submit a nameless sample of wine. Accordingly, a red wine was circulated, tasted, and much commended. Several of the company pronounced it Burgundy, but could not agree as to the special vintage or the year. Goethe alone tasted and tasted again, shook his head, and, with a meditative air, set his glass on the table. ‘Your Excellency appears to be of a different opinion,’ said the court marshal. ‘May I ask what name you give to the wine?’ ‘The wine,’ said the poet, ‘is quite unknown to me; but I do not think it is a Burgundy. I should rather consider it a good Jena wine that has been kept for some while in a Madeira cask.’ ‘And so, in fact, it is,’ said the court marshal. For a more discriminating palate, one must go to the story of the rival wine-tasters in ‘Don Quixote,’ who from a single glass detected the key and leather thong in a cask of wine.”

But that great capacity means also discriminating palate could hardly be true for Americans of the old stock and simple life. Judge Usher, Secretary of Interior in Lincoln’s Cabinet at the time of the President’s death, said that he had never heard Abraham Lincoln refer to his food in any way whatever.

* * * * *

From a consideration of women’s cook-books springs another suggestion. Heaped upon one’s table, the open pages and appetiteful illustrations put one to thinking that if women of intelligence, and of leisure except for burdens they assume under so-called charity or a faddish impulse, were to take each some department of the household, and give time and effort to gaining a complete knowledge of that department--a knowledge of its evolution and history, of its scientific and hygienic bearings, of its gastronomic values if it touched upon the table--there would be great gain to the world at large and to their friends. For instance, if a woman skilled in domestic science and the domestic arts were to take some fruit, or some vegetable, or cereal, or meat, and develop to the utmost what an old author-cook calls, after those cook-oracles of ancient Rome, the “Apician mysteries” of the dish, her name would deserve to go down to posterity with something of the odor--or flavor--of sanctity. Hundreds of saints in the calendar never did anything half so meritorious and worthy of felicitous recognition from their fellow-men.

Take, for example, the democratic cabbage and its cousins german, and their treatment in the average cuisine. What might not such an investigation show this Monsieur Chou or Herr Kohl and his relations capable of!--the cabbage itself, the Scotch kale, the Jersey cabbage, and Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower, and broccoli, and kohl-rabi, and cabbage palms, and still other species! Looked at in their evolution, and the part they have played in human history as far back as in old Persia and the Anabasis of the Greeks, and so late as the famine times of Ireland, these succulent and nutritious vegetables would be most interesting. And, even if chemically their elements vary, the fact that all the family are blessed with a large percentage of nitrogen might be shown to have increased their usefulness long before chemists analyzed their tissues and told us why men who could not buy meat so carefully cultivated the foody leaves. Under such sane and beneficent impulses every well-directed household would become an experiment station for the study of human food--not the extravagant and rare after the test and search of imperial Heliogabalus, but in the best modern, scientific, economic, gastronomic, and democratic manner.

Since making this foregoing suggestion I find this point similarly touched by the man who dissertated on roast pig. “It is a desideratum,” says Lamb, “in works that treat de re culinaria, that we have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed flavours: as to show why cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why the haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant jelly, the shoulder civilly declineth it; why loin of veal (a pretty problem), being itself unctious, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter--and why the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points to parsnips.... We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery. We feed ignorantly, and want to be able to give a reason of the relish that is in us.”

In speaking of modern household books one cannot have done without adding still one word more about the use of the word “servant” as these books seem to speak of it. Owing to an attempted Europeanizing of our ideas, and also to the fact that many of our domestics are of foreign birth and habits of thought--or of the lowly, velvet-voiced, unassertive suavity of the most loyal negro--the term has gradually crept to a quasi acceptance in this country. It is a word not infrequently obnoxious to Americans--employers--of the old stock, and trained in the spirit which wrote the Declaration of Independence and fought its sequent War. “From the time of the Revolution,” says Miss Salmon in her “Domestic Service,” “until about 1850 the word ‘servant’ does not seem to have been generally applied in either section [north or south] to white persons of American birth.”

The term indicates social conditions which no longer exist and represents ideas which no longer have real life--we have but to consider how the radical Defoe published, in 1724, “The Great Law of Subordination consider’d; or, the Insolence and Unsufferable Behaviour of Servants in England duly enquir’d into,” to be convinced of our vast advance in human sympathy--and a revival of our American spirit toward the word would be a wholesome course. In the mouths of many who use it to excess--those mainly at fault are innocently imitative, unthinking, or pretentious women--it sounds ungracious, if not vulgar, and distinctly untrue to those who made the country for us and desirable for us to live in; and untrue also to the best social feeling of to-day. It is still for a genuine American rather hard to imagine a person such as the word “servant” connotes--a lackey, a receiver of tips of any sort--with an election ballot in hand and voting thinkingly, knowingly, intelligently for the guidance of our great government. It would not have been so difficult for the old δοῦλοι of Athens to vote upon the Pnyx as for such a man to vote aright for us. And not infrequently, in the ups and downs of speculation and the mushroom growth and life of fortunes among us, the “servant,” to use the old biblical phrase, is sometimes greater in moral, intellectual, and social graces than his “lord.” The term belongs to times, and the temperamental condition of times when traces of slavery were common, and when employers believed, and acted upon the faith, that they hired not a person’s labor but the person himself--or herself--who was subject to a sort of ownership and control.

Let us remand the word to the days of Dean Swift and such conditions as the tremendous satire of his “Directions to Servants” exhibited, in which--except perhaps in Swift’s great heart--there was neither the humanity of our times, nor the courtesy of our times, nor the sure knowledge of our times--which endeavor to create, and, in truth, are gradually making trained and skilful workers in every department, and demand in return for service with perfectness as its aim, independence of the person, dignified treatment and genuine respect from the employer.

All these things the women’s household and cook-books will be, nay, are, gradually teaching, and that which Charles Carter, “lately cook to his Grace the Duke of Argyle,” wrote in 1730 may still hold good: “’Twill be very easy,” said Master Carter, “for an ordinary Cook when he is well-instructed in the most Elegant Parts of his Profession to lower his Hand at any time; and he that can excellently perform in a Courtly and Grand Manner, will never be at a Loss in any other.” When this future knowledge and adjustment come we shall be free from the tendencies which Mistress Glasse, after her outspoken manner, describes of her own generation: “So much is the blind folly of this age,” cries the good woman, “that they would rather be imposed upon by a French booby than give encouragement to a good English cook.”

Economic changes such as we have indicated must in measurable time ensue. The science and the art of conducting a house are now obtaining recognition in our schools. Not long, and the knowledge will be widespread. Its very existence, and the possibility of its diffusion, is a result of the nineteenth century movement for the broadening of women’s knowledge and the expansion of their interests and independence--this wedded with the humane conviction that the wisest and fruitfullest use of scientific deduction and skill is in the bettering of human life. Behind and giving potence to these impulses is the fellowship, liberty, and equality of human kind--the great idea of democracy.

Already we have gone back to the wholesomeness of our English forebears’ estimate that the physician and cook are inseparable. Further still, we may ultimately retrace our ideas, and from the point of view of economics and sociology declare that with us, as with the old Jews and Greeks, the priest and the cook are one.

PLAGIARIZING HUMORS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

And this I sweare by blackest brooke of hell,
I am no pick-purse of another’s wit.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

Yet these mine owne, I wrong not other men,
Nor traffique farther then this happy clime,
Nor filch from Portes, nor from Petrarchs pen,
A fault too common in this latter time.
Divine Sir Philip, I avouch thy writ,
I am no pick-purse of anothers wit.

MICHAEL DRAYTON

A thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

PLAGIARIZING HUMORS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Among the jocularities of literature none is greater than Squire Bickerstaff’s; and none has had greater results--with perhaps one exception. The practicality of the Squire’s jest and the flavor of it suited the century of Squire Western rather than our own. But its excuse was in the end it served of breaking the old astrologer’s hold upon the people.

Jonathan Swift is the writer to whom the original Bickerstaff squibs are in the main to be ascribed. It is due to Swift’s clarity and strength that they are among the best of literary fooling.

But Swift was not alone. He had the help of Addison, Steele, Prior, Congreve, and other wits of Will’s Coffee-House and St. James’s. Together they set all London laughing. Upon Swift’s shoulders, however, falls the onus of the joke which must have been his recreation amid pamphleteering and the smudging of his ecclesiastical hand with political ink. It happened in 1708.

The English almanac was not in Swift’s day as in later times a simple calendar of guesses about the weather. It was rather a “prognosticator” in ambiguous phrase of war, pestilence, murder, and such horrors as our yellow press nowadays serves up to readers, like in development to the conning public of the old almanacs. It was at all times solemn and dogmatic. What the almanac prognosticated was its philomath’s duty to furnish. His science and pre-science builded a supposed influence of the stars and their movements upon the moral life of man.

Squire Bicker staff’s jest had to do with almanac-makers, and was directed against a chief pretender, Dr. Partridge, the astrologer and philomath Pope refers to when he speaks of the translation of the raped “Lock” to the skies:

“This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,
When next he looks through Galileo’s eyes;
And hence th’ egregious wizard shall foredoom
The fate of Louis and the fall of Rome.”

In the seventeenth century the ascendency of these charlatans had become alarming. One of the most adroit and unscrupulous of their number--William Lilly--had large following. They not only had the popular ear, but now and then a man like Dryden inclined to them. Nor did Sir Thomas Browne “reject a sober and regulated astrology.”

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the scandal of their excesses was growing, and it was then that Swift came forward--just as Swift was constantly coming forward with his great humanity, in one instance to save Ireland the infliction of Wood’s halfpence, and again in protest against English restriction of Irish trade; poor Swift’s heart was always with the poor, the duped and undefended--it was then that Swift came forward with “Predictions for the year 1708. Wherein the Month, and the Day of the Month, are set down, the Person named, and the great Actions and Events of next Year particularly related, as They will come to Pass. Written to Prevent the People of England from being farther imposed on by the vulgar Almanack-Makers.”

The surname of the signature, “Isaac Bickerstaff,” Swift took from a locksmith’s sign. The Isaac he added as not commonly in use.

“I have considered,” he begins, “the gross abuse of astrology in this kingdom, and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors, who set up to be the artists. I know several learned men have contended that the whole is a cheat; that it is absurd and ridiculous to imagine the stars can have any influence at all upon human actions, thoughts, or inclinations; and whoever has not bent his studies that way may be excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean, illiterate traders between us and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from no greater a height than their own brains....

“As for the few following predictions, I now offer the world, I forebore to publish them till I had perused the several Almanacks for the year we are now entered upon. I found them all in the usual strain, and I beg the reader will compare their manner with mine: and here I make bold to tell the world that I lay the whole credit of my art upon the truth of these predictions; and I will be content that Partridge and the rest of his clan may hoot me for a cheat and impostor, if I fail in any single particular of moment....

“My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it to show how ignorant these sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns: it relates to Partridge, the Almanack-maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs in time....”

An “Answer to Bickerstaff by a Person of Quality,” evidently from the hand of Swift and his friends, followed these “Predictions.”

“I have not observed for some years past,” it begins, “any insignificant paper to have made more noise, or be more greedily bought, than that of these Predictions.... I shall not enter upon the examination of them; but think it very incumbent upon the learned Mr. Partridge to take them into his consideration, and lay as many errors in astrology as possible to Mr. Bickerstaff’s account. He may justly, I think, challenge the ’squire to publish the calculation he has made of Partridge’s nativity, by the credit of which he so determinately pronounces the time and manner of his death; and Mr. Bickerstaff can do no less in honour, than give Mr. Partridge the same advantage of calculating his, by sending him an account of the time and place of his birth, with other particulars necessary for such a work. By which, no doubt, the learned world will be engaged in the dispute, and take part on each side according as they are inclined....”

“The Accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions, being an Account of the Death of Mr. Partridge, the Almanack-Maker, upon the 29th instant in a Letter to a Person of Honour, written in the year 1708,” continues the jocularity.

“My Lord: In obedience to your Lordship’s commands, as well as to satisfy my own curiosity, I have some days past inquired constantly after Partridge the Almanack-maker, of whom it was foretold in Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions, published about a month ago, that he should die the 29th instant, about eleven at night, of a raging fever.... I saw him accidentally once or twice, about ten days before he died, and observed he began very much to droop and languish, though I hear his friends did not seem to apprehend him in any danger. About two or three days ago he grew ill, ... but when I saw him he had his understanding as well as ever I knew, and spoke strong and hearty, without any seeming uneasiness or constraint [saying].... ‘I am a poor ignorant fellow, bred to a mean trade, yet I have sense enough to know that all pretences of foretelling by astrology are deceits for this manifest reason: because the wise and the learned, who can only judge whether there be any truth in this science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor, ignorant vulgar give it any credit, and that only upon the word of such silly wretches as I and my fellows, who can hardly write or read.’...

“After half an hour’s conversation I took my leave, being almost stifled with the closeness of the room. I imagined he could not hold out long, and therefore withdrew to a little coffee-house hard by, leaving a servant at the house with orders to come immediately and tell me, as near as he could, the minute when Partridge should expire, which was not above two hours after.”

The burlesque next before the public, “Squire Bickerstaff detected; or, the Astrological Impostor convicted, by John Partridge, student of physic and astrology, a True and Impartial account of the Proceedings of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., against me,” was doubtless drawn up by Addison’s friend Yalden, whom Scott speaks of as “Partridge’s near neighbor.”

“The 28th of March, Anno Dom. 1708,” it begins, “being the night this sham prophet had so impudently fixed for my last, which made little impression on myself: but I cannot answer for my whole family; for my wife, with concern more than usual, prevailed on me to take somewhat to sweat for a cold; and between the hours of eight and nine to go to bed; the maid, as she was warming my bed, with a curiosity natural to young wenches, runs to the window, and asks of one passing the street who the bell tolled for? Dr. Partridge, says he, the famous almanack-maker, who died suddenly this evening: the poor girl, provoked, told him he lied like a rascal; the other very sedately replied, the sexton had so informed him, and if false, he was to blame for imposing upon a stranger. She asked a second, and a third, as they passed, and every one was in the same tone. Now, I do not say these are accomplices to a certain astrological ’squire, and that one Bickerstaff might be sauntering thereabout, because I will assert nothing here, but what I dare attest for plain matter of fact. My wife at this fell into a violent disorder, and I must own I was a little discomposed at the oddness of the accident. In the mean time one knocks at my door; Betty runs down, and opening, finds a sober grave person, who modestly inquires if this was Dr. Partridge’s? She, taking him for some cautious city patient, that came at that time for privacy, shews him into the dining-room. As soon as I could compose myself, I went to him, and was surprised to find my gentleman mounted on a table with a two-foot rule in his hand, measuring my walls, and taking the dimensions of the room. Pray, sir, says I, not to interrupt you, have you any business with me?--Only, sir, replies he, order the girl to bring me a better light, for this is a very dim one.--Sir, says I, my name is Partridge.--O! the doctor’s brother, belike, cries he; the staircase, I believe, and these two apartments hung in close mourning will be sufficient, and only a strip of bays round the other rooms. The doctor must needs die rich, he had great dealings in his way for many years; if he had no family coat, you had as good use the escutcheons of the company, they are as showish, and will look as magnificent, as if he was descended from the blood royal.--With that I assumed a greater air of authority, and demanded who employed him, or how he came there?--Why, I was sent, sir, by the company of undertakers, says he, and they were employed by the honest gentleman, who is executor to the good doctor departed; and our rascally porter, I believe, is fallen fast asleep with the black cloth and sconces, or he had been here, and we might have been tacking up by this time.--Sir, says I, pray be advised by a friend, and make the best of your speed out of my doors, for I hear my wife’s voice (which, by the by, is pretty distinguishable), and in that corner of the room stands a good cudgel, which somebody has felt before now; if that light in her hands, and she know the business you come about, without consulting the stars, I can assure you it will be employed very much to the detriment of your person.--Sir, cries he, bowing with great civility, I perceive extreme grief for the loss of the doctor disorders you a little at present, but early in the morning I will wait on you with all the necessary materials....

“Well, once more I got my door closed, and prepared for bed, in hopes of a little repose after so many ruffling adventures; just as I was putting out my light in order to it, another bounces as hard as he can knock; I open the window and ask who is there and what he wants? I am Ned, the sexton, replies he, and come to know whether the doctor left any orders for a funeral sermon, and where he is to be laid, and whether his grave is to be plain or bricked?--Why, sirrah, say I, you know me well enough; you know I am not dead, and how dare you affront me after this manner?--Alackaday, sir, replies the fellow, why it is in print, and the whole town knows you are dead; why, there is Mr. White, the joiner, is fitting screws to your coffin; he will be here with it in an instant: he was afraid you would have wanted it before this time.... In short, what with undertakers, embalmers, joiners, sextons, and your damned elegy hawkers upon a late practitioner in physic and astrology, I got not one wink of sleep the whole night, nor scarce a moment’s rest ever since....

“I could not stir out of doors for the space of three months after this, but presently one comes up to me in the street, Mr. Partridge, that coffin you was last buried in, I have not yet been paid for: Doctor, cries another dog, how do you think people can live by making of graves for nothing? next time you die, you may even toll out the bell yourself for Ned. A third rogue tips me by the elbow, and wonders how I have the conscience to sneak abroad without paying my funeral expenses.--Lord, says one, I durst have swore that was honest Dr. Partridge, my old friend, but, poor man, he is gone.--I beg your pardon, says another, you look so like my old acquaintance that I used to consult on some private occasions; but, alack, he is gone the way of all flesh.--Look, look, look, cries a third, after a competent space of staring at me, would not one think our neighbour, the almanack-maker, was crept out of his grave, to take the other peep at the stars in this world, and shew how much he is improved in fortune-telling by having taken a journey to the other?...

“My poor wife is run almost distracted with being called widow Partridge, when she knows it is false; and once a term she is cited into the court to take out letters of administration. But the greatest grievance is a paltry quack that takes up my calling just under my nose, and in his printed directions, with N. B.--says he lives in the house of the late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner in leather, physic, and astrology....”

The astrologer, forgetting to refer to the stars for evidence, indignantly declared himself to be alive, and Swift’s returning “Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., against what is objected to by Mr. Partridge in his Almanack for the present year, 1709, by the said Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.,” complains:

“Mr. Partridge has been lately pleased to treat me after a very rough manner in that which is called his almanack for the present year ... [regarding] my predictions, which foretold the death of Mr. Partridge to happen on March 29, 1708. This he is pleased to contradict absolutely in the almanack he has published for the present year....

“Without entering into criticisms of chronology about the hour of his death, I shall only prove that Mr. Partridge is not alive. And my first argument is this: about a thousand gentlemen having bought his almanacks for this year, merely to find what he said against me, at every line they read, they would lift up their eyes, and cry out betwixt rage and laughter, ‘they were sure no man alive ever writ such damned stuff as this.’ Neither did I ever hear that opinion disputed: ... Therefore, if an uninformed carcase walks still about and is pleased to call himself Partridge, Mr. Bickerstaff does not think himself any way answerable for that. Neither had the said carcase any right to beat the poor boy who happened to pass by it in the street, crying, ‘A full and true account of Dr. Partridge’s death,’ etc.

“... I will plainly prove him to be dead, out of his own almanack for this year, and from the very passage which he produces to make us think him alive. He there says ‘he is not only now alive, but was also alive upon that very 29th of March which I foretold he should die on’: by this he declares his opinion that a man may be alive now who was not alive a twelvemonth ago. And indeed there lies the sophistry of his argument. He dares not assert he was alive ever since that 29th of March, but that he ‘is now alive and was so on that day’: I grant the latter; for he did not die till night, as appears by the printed account of his death, in a letter to a lord; and whether he be since revived, I leave the world to judge....”

The joke had gained its end; the astrologer and philomath had been ridiculed out of existence. But the name of the “astrological ’squire” was in everybody’s mouth; and when in April, 1709, Steele began “The Tatler,” Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, spoke in the dedication of a gentleman who “had written Predictions, and Two or Three other Pieces in my Name, which had render’d it famous through all Parts of Europe; and by an inimitable Spirit and Humour, raised it to as high a Pitch of Reputation as it could possibly arrive at.”

The Inquisition in Portugal had, with utmost gravity, condemned Bickerstaff’s predictions and the readers of them, and had burnt his predictions. The Company of Stationers in London obtained in 1709 an injunction against the issuing of any almanac by John Partridge, as if in fact he were dead.

* * * * *

If the fame of this foolery was through all parts of Europe, it must also have crossed to the English colonies of America, and by reference to this fact we may explain the curious literary parallel Poor Richard’s Almanac affords. Twenty-five years later Benjamin Franklin played the selfsame joke in Philadelphia.

Franklin was but two years old when Swift and his Bickerstaff coadjutors were jesting. But by the time he had grown and wandered to Philadelphia and become a journeyman printer--by 1733--Addison, Steele, Prior, and Congreve had died, and Swift’s wonderful mind was turned upon and eating itself in the silent deanery of St. Patrick’s.

Conditions about him gave Franklin every opportunity for the jest. The almanac in the America of 1733 had even greater acceptance than the like publication of England in Isaac Bickerstaff’s day. No output of the colonial press, not even the publication of theological tracts, was so frequent or so remunerative. It was the sole annual which commonly penetrated the farmhouse of the colonists, where it hung in neighborly importance near the Bible, Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” and Jonathan Edwards’s tractate on “The Freedom of the Human Will.” And it had uses. Besides furnishing a calendar, weather prophecies, and jokes, it added receipts for cooking, pickling, dyeing, and in many ways was the “Useful Companion” its title-page proclaimed.

So keen, practical, and energetic a nature as Franklin’s could not let the opportunity pass for turning a penny, and with the inimitable adaptability that marked him all his life he begins his Poor Richard of 1733:

“Courteous Reader, I might in this place attempt to gain thy favour by declaring that I write Almanacks with no other view than that of the publick good, but in this I should not be sincere; and men are now-a-days too wise to be deceiv’d by pretences, how specious soever. The plain truth of the matter is, I am excessive poor, and my wife, good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she can not bear, she says, to sit spinning in her shift of tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my books and rattling-traps (as she calls my instruments), if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has offer’d me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus began to comply with my dame’s desire.

“Indeed, this motive would have had force enough to have made me publish an Almanack many years since, had it not been overpowered by my regard for my good friend and fellow-student, Mr. Titan Leeds, whose interest I was extreamly unwilling to hurt. But this obstacle (I am far from speaking it with pleasure) is soon to be removed, since inexorable death, who was never known to respect merit, has already prepared the mortal dart, the fatal sister has already extended her destroying shears, and that ingenious man must soon be taken from us. He dies, by my calculation, made at his request, on Oct. 17, 1733, 3 ho. 29 m., P.M., at the very instant of the ☌ of ☉ and ☿. By his own calculation he will survive till the 26th of the same month. This small difference between us we have disputed whenever we have met these nine years past; but at length he is inclinable to agree with my judgment. Which of us is most exact, a little time will now determine. As, therefore, these Provinces may not longer expect to see any of his performances after this year, I think myself free to take up my task, and request a share of publick encouragement, which I am the more apt to hope for on this account, that the buyer of my Almanack may consider himself not only as purchasing an useful utensil, but as performing an act of charity to his poor

“Friend and servant,
“R. SAUNDERS.”

Franklin had a more eager biter than Partridge proved to Bickerstaff’s bait, and Titan Leeds, in his American Almanack for 1734, showed how uneasy was the hook:

“Kind Reader, Perhaps it may be expected that I should say something concerning an Almanack printed for the Year 1733, said to be writ by Poor Richard or Richard Saunders, who for want of other matter was pleased to tell his Readers, that he had calculated my Nativity, and from thence predicts my Death to be the 17th of October, 1733. At 29 min. past 3 a-clock in the Afternoon, and that these Provinces may not expect to see any more of his (Titan Leeds) Performances, and this precise Predicter, who predicts to a Minute, proposes to succeed me in Writing of Almanacks; but notwithstanding his false Prediction, I have by the Mercy of God lived to write a diary for the Year 1734, and to publish the Folly and Ignorance of this presumptuous Author. Nay, he adds another gross Falsehood in his Almanack, viz.--That by my own Calculation, I shall survive until the 26th of the said Month (October), which is as untrue as the former, for I do not pretend to that Knowledge, altho’ he has usurpt the Knowledge of the Almighty herein, and manifested himself a Fool and a Lyar. And by the mercy of God I have lived to survive this conceited Scriblers Day and Minute whereon he has predicted my Death; and as I have supplyed my Country with Almanacks for three seven Years by past, to general Satisfaction, so perhaps I may live to write when his Performances are Dead. Thus much from your annual Friend, Titan Leeds, October 18, 1733, 3 ho. 33 min. P.M.”

“... In the preface to my last Almanack,” wrote Franklin, in genuine humor, in Poor Richard for 1734, “I foretold the death of my dear old friend and fellow-student, the learned and ingenious Mr. Titan Leeds, which was to be the 17th of October, 1733, 3 h., 29 m., P.M., at the very instant of the ☌ of ☉ and ☿. By his own calculation, he was to survive till the 26th of the same month, and expire in the time of the eclipse, near 11 o’clock A.M. At which of these times he died, or whether he be really yet dead, I cannot at this present writing positively assure my readers; forasmuch as a disorder in my own family demanded my presence, and would not permit me, as I had intended, to be with him in his last moments, to receive his last embrace, to close his eyes, and do the duty of a friend in performing the last offices to the departed. Therefore it is that I cannot positively affirm whether he be dead or not; for the stars only show to the skilful what will happen in the natural and universal chain of causes and effects; but ’tis well known, that the events which would otherwise certainly happen, at certain times, in the course of nature, are sometimes set aside or postpon’d, for wise and good reasons, by the immediate particular disposition of Providence; which particular disposition the stars can by no means discover or foreshow. There is, however (and I can not speak it without sorrow), there is the strongest probability that my dear friend is no more; for there appears in his name, as I am assured, an Almanack for the year 1734, in which I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome manner, in which I am called a false predicter, an ignorant, a conceited scribbler, a fool and a lyar. Mr. Leeds was too well bred to use any man so indecently and so scurrilously, and moreover his esteem and affection for me was extraordinary; so that it is to be feared that pamphlet may be only a contrivance of somebody or other, who hopes, perhaps, to sell two or three years’ Almanacks still, by the sole force and virtue of Mr. Leeds’ name. But, certainly, to put words into the mouth of a gentleman and a man of letters against his friend, which the meanest and most scandalous of the people might be ashamed to utter even in a drunken quarrel, is an unpardonable injury to his memory, and an imposition upon the publick.

“Mr. Leeds was not only profoundly skilful in the useful science he profess’d, but he was a man of exemplary sobriety, a most sincere friend, and an exact performer of his word. These valuable qualifications, with many others, so much endeared him to me, that although it should be so, that, contrary to all probability, contrary to my prediction and his own, he might possibly be yet alive, yet my loss of honour, as a prognosticate, cannot afford me so much mortification as his life, health, and safety would give me joy and satisfaction....”

Again, Leeds, in The American Almanack for 1735, returns Franklin’s jest:

“Courteous and Kind Reader: My Almanack being in its usual Method, needs no Explanation; but perhaps it may be expected by some that I shall say something concerning Poor Richard, or otherwise Richard Saunders’s Almanack, which I suppose was printed in the Year 1733 for the ensuing Year 1734, wherein he useth me with such good Manners, I can hardly find what to say to him, without it is to advise him not to be too proud because by his Prædicting my Death, and his writing an Almanack....

“But if Falsehood and Inginuity be so rewarded, What may he expect if ever he be in a capacity to publish that that is either Just or according to Art? Therefore I shall say little more about it than, as a Friend, to advise he will never take upon him to prædict or ascribe any Person’s Death, till he has learned to do it better than he did before....”

To this exhortation Franklin makes the following gay sally in Poor Richard for 1735.

“... Whatever may be the musick of the spheres, how great soever the harmony of the stars, ’tis certain there is no harmony among the star-gazers: but they are perpetually growling and snarling at one another like strange curs, or like some men at their wives. I had resolved to keep the peace on my own part, and offend none of them; and I shall persist in that resolution. But having receiv’d much abuse from Titan Leeds deceas’d (Titan Leeds when living would not have used me so): I say, having receiv’d much abuse from the ghost of Titan Leeds, who pretends to be still living, and to write Almanacks in spight of me and my predictions, I can not help saying, that tho’ I take it patiently, I take it very unkindly. And whatever he may pretend, ’tis undoubtedly true that he is really defunct and dead. First, because the stars are seldom disappointed, never but in the case of wise men, sapiens dominabitur asties, and they foreshadowed his death at the time I predicted it. Secondly, ’twas requisite and necessary he should die punctually at that time for the honor of astrology, the art professed both by him and his father before him. Thirdly, ’tis plain to every one that reads his two last Almanacks (for 1734 and ’35), that they are not written with that life his performances used to be written with; the wit is low and flat; the little hints dull and spiritless; nothing smart in them but Hudibras’s verses against astrology at the heads of the months in the last, which no astrologer but a dead one would have inserted, and no man living would or could write such stuff as the rest. But lastly, I shall convince him from his own words that he is dead (ex ore suo condemnatus est); for in his preface to his Almanack for 1734, he says: ‘Saunders adds another gross falsehood in his Almanack, viz., that by my own calculation, I shall survive until the 26th of the said month, October, 1733, which is as untrue as the former.’ Now if it be as Leeds says, untrue and a gross falsehood, that he survived till the 26th of October, 1733, then it is certainly true that he died before that time; and if he died before that time he is dead now to all intents and purposes, anything he may say to the contrary notwithstanding. And at what time before the 26th is it so likely he should die, as at the time by me predicted, viz., the 17th of October aforesaid? But if some people will walk and be troublesome after death, it may perhaps be borne with a little, because it cannot well be avoided, unless one would be at the pains and expense of laying them in the Red Sea; however, they should not presume too much upon the liberty allowed them. I know confinement must needs be mighty irksome to the free spirit of an astronomer, and I am too compassionate to proceed suddenly to extremities with it; nevertheless, tho’ I resolve with reluctance, I shall not long defer, if it does not speedily learn to treat its living friends with better manners.

“I am,

“Courteous reader,

“Your obliged friend and servant,

“R. SAUNDERS.”

Here for the nonce the jeu d’esprit ended. In carrying the matter further Franklin hardly showed the taste of Bickerstaff. The active, bristling, self-assertive ὕβρις which characterized his early manhood led him further on to stand over the very grave of Leeds. Before he made his Almanac for 1740 his competitor had died. But even Leeds dead he seemed to deem fair play.

“October 7, 1739.

“COURTEOUS READER: You may remember that in my first Almanack, published for the year 1733, I predicted the death of my dear friend, Titan Leeds, Philomat, to happen that year on the 17th day of October, 3 h. 29 m. P.M. The good man, it seems, died accordingly. But W. B. and A. B.[6] have continued to publish Almanacks in his name ever since; asserting for some years that he was still living. At length when the truth could no longer be concealed from the world, they confessed his death in their Almanack for 1739, but pretended that he died not till last year, and that before his departure he had furnished them with calculations for 7 years to come.--Ah, my friends, these are poor shifts and thin disguises; of which indeed I should have taken little or no notice, if you had not at the same time accused me as a false predictor; an aspersion that the more affects me as my whole livelyhood depends on a contrary character.

“But to put this matter beyond dispute, I shall acquaint the world with a fact, as strange and surprising as it is true; being as follows, viz.:

“On the 4th instant, toward midnight, as I sat in my little study writing this Preface, I fell fast asleep; and continued in that condition for some time, without dreaming any thing, to my knowledge. On awaking I found lying before me the following, viz.:

“‘DEAR FRIEND SAUNDERS: My respect for you continues even in this separate state; and I am griev’d to see the aspersions thrown on you by the malevolence of avaricious publishers of Almanacks, who envy your success. They say your prediction of my death in 1733 was false, and they pretend that I remained alive many years after. But I do hereby certify that I did actually die at that time, precisely at the hour you mention’d, with a variation only of 5 min. 53 sec, which must be allow’d to be no great matter in such cases. And I do further declare that I furnish’d them with no calculations of the planets’ motions, etc., seven years after my death, as they are pleased to give out: so that the stuff they publish as an Almanack in my name is no more mine than ’tis yours.

“‘You will wonder, perhaps, how this paper comes written on your table. You must know that no separate spirits are under any confinement till after the final settlement of all accounts. In the meantime we wander where we please, visit our old friends, observe their actions, enter sometimes into their imaginations, and give them hints waking or sleeping that may be of advantage to them. Finding you asleep, I enter’d your left nostril, ascended into your brain, found out where the ends of those nerves were fastened that move your right hand and fingers, by the help of which I am now writing unknown to you; but when you open your eyes you will see that the hand written is mine, tho’ wrote with yours.

“‘The people of this infidel age, perhaps, will hardly believe this story. But you may give them these three signs by which they shall be convinced of the truth of it.--About the middle of June next, J. J----n,[7] Philomat, shall be openly reconciled to the Church of Rome, and give all his goods and chattels to the chappel, being perverted by a certain country schoolmaster. On the 7th of September following my old Friend W. B----t shall be sober 9 hours, to the astonishment of all his neighbours:--And about the same time W. B. and A. B. will publish another Almanack in my name, in spight of truth and common sense.

“‘As I can see much clearer into futurity, since I got free from the dark prison of flesh, in which I was continually molested and almost blinded with fogs arising from tiff, and the smoke of burnt drams; I shall in kindness to you, frequently give you information of things to come, for the improvement of your Almanack: being, Dear Dick, Your Affectionate Friend,

“‘T. LEEDS.’

“For my own part, I am convinced that the above letter is genuine. If the reader doubts of it, let him carefully observe the three signs; and if they do not actually come to pass, believe as he pleases. I am his humble Friend,

“R. SAUNDERS.”

In this wise ended Poor Richard’s jest. Franklin’s style throughout is so simple and direct that one is at first inclined to scout the suggestion that the joke is not entirely original. It is impossible, however, to suppose that Franklin, with his broad reading, did not know Squire Bickerstaff’s. The development of the humor is wholly imitated. But Franklin made the method his own so thoroughly that his wit has those keener, subtler, more agile qualities which have distinguished American from the slower and sedater humor of the English. In the Bickerstaff jocularity evidences of the death of Partridge are enumerated in material surroundings of a not too prosperous London quack. Franklin, on the other hand, ironically and graphically reasons upon supposititious traits and qualities of character and breeding.

In England, Swift’s squib having given the death-blow to astrology, “Merlinus Liberatus, by John Partridge,” was published years after, but shorn of its specious and misleading pretences. Franklin’s jesting was more self-seeking.

Not one of Franklin’s biographers or editors has referred to the Bickerstaff joke. Upon the contrary, in an “Introduction to Fac-simile of Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1733,” published by The Duodecimos in 1894, it is asserted that Franklin “in a strain of delightful satire upon the already venerable pretensions of almanac-makers to foretell the future, ... disposes of this difficulty by a method so novel, so ingenious, and withal of an illuminating power so far-reaching as to set the whole colony talking about it.”

It need hardly be added that none of Swift’s biographers--all being English--have hinted at Franklin’s pleasantry.

The inextinguishable laughter--the true Homeric ἄσβεστος γέλως--which is the atmosphere of both incidents, fits them to rank with the imaginary durance of Sancho Panza upon his island, or with Tartarin in Tarascon, or, to go to the first humor of literature, with the advance and retreat of Thersites in the council of Zeus-nourished kings. And in Britain and America all our heroes were real.

* * * * *

Upon other occasions than the Saunders-Leeds jesting Franklin loved playful feint; he had “Bagatelles” for his delight. It was a quizzical side of the character which made him the first of our notable American humorists. To amuse himself with an oriental apologue which he called “The Parable of Persecution,” he had the story bound with a Bible. From this book he would read the legend aloud, amazing his auditors that so beautiful a scriptural passage had escaped their knowledge.

The form in which Franklin cast the tale is this:

“And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent, about the going down of the sun.

“And behold a man, bowed with age, came from the way of the wilderness, leaning on a staff.

“And Abraham arose and met him, and said unto him, ‘Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt arise early on the morrow, and go thy way,’

“But the man said, ‘Nay, for I will abide under this tree.’

“And Abraham pressed him greatly: so he turned and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat.