Chapter VI: Franklin's British Friends (2)

In one of his letters to Strahan, before his return to England, on his second mission, there is a sly stroke that gives us additional insight into the intimate relations which the two men had contracted with each other.

You tell me [Franklin said] that the value I set on
your political letters is a strong proof that my
judgment is on the decline. People seldom have friends
kind enough to tell them that disagreeable truth,
however useful it might be to know it; and indeed I
learn more from what you say than you intended I
should; for it convinces me that you had observed the
decline for some time past in other instances, as 'tis
very unlikely you should see it first in my good
opinion of your writings.

With Franklin's return to England on his second mission, the old friendly intercourse between Strahan and himself was resumed, but it came wholly to an end during the American Revolution; for Strahan was the King's Printer, an inveterate Tory, and one of the ministerial phalanx, which followed George III. blindly. When the dragon's teeth sown by the King began to spring up in serried ranks, Franklin wrote, but did not send, to Strahan the letter, which is so well known as to almost make transcription unnecessary.

MR. STRAHAN,

You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that
Majority which has doomed my Country to
Destruction.--You have begun to burn our Towns, and
murder our People.--Look upon your Hands! They are
stained with the Blood of your Relations!--You and I
were long Friends:--You are now my Enemy,--and I am

Yours,
B. FRANKLIN.

In this instance, also, Franklin was but true to his practice of sometimes inserting a quip or a quirk into even the gravest contexts.

Not until December 4, 1781, does the silence between the two friends, produced by the Revolution, appear to have been really broken. On that date, Franklin wrote to Strahan a formal letter, addressing him no longer as "Dear Straney," but as "Dear Sir," and concluding with none of the former affectionate terminations, but in the stiffest terms of obsequious eighteenth century courtesy. The ostensible occasion for the letter was a package of letters which he asked Strahan to forward to Mrs. Strange, the wife of Robert Strange, the celebrated engraver, whose address he did not remember. He also asked Strahan for a copy of the _Tully on Old Age_, which Franklin had printed in Philadelphia many years before, and had endeavored to sell in part in London through Strahan. Well maintained as the reserve of this letter is, it is plainly enough that of a man, who is feeling his way a little cautiously, because he does not know just how his approaches will be received. Between the lines, we can see that the real object of the requests about the package of letters and the Latin classic was to find out whether Franklin's treason had killed all desire on Straney's part to open a second bottle with him. There is a by-reference to Didot le Jeune, who was bidding fair to carry the art of fine printing to a high pitch of perfection, and an expression of pleasure that Strahan had married his daughter happily, and that his prosperity continued. "I hope," Franklin said, "it may never meet with any Interruption having still, tho' at present divided by public Circumstances, a Remembrance of our ancient private Friendship." Nor did he fail to present his affectionate respects to Mrs. Strahan and his love to Strahan's children. The olive branch was distinctly held out, but, just about the time that this letter reached Strahan, the ministry, of which he was such an unfaltering adherent, suffered a defeat on the American question, and the Tully was transmitted by Mrs. Strange's husband with the statement that he really believed that Strahan himself would have written to Franklin but for the smart of the Parliamentary disaster of that morning. Several years later, there came to Franklin an acknowledgment by Strahan of the very friendly and effectual patronage which had been afforded to a distant kinswoman of his at Philadelphia by Franklin's family. The letter also eagerly urged Franklin to come to England once more, and with Franklin's reply, signed "yours ever most affectionately," the old _entente_ was fully re-established. In the high animal spirits, aroused by the renewal of the former relationship, he fell back upon the technical terms of the printing house, so familiar to the two friends, for the purpose of illustrating his pet proposition that England would never be at rest until all the enormous salaries, emoluments and patronage of her great offices were abolished, and these offices were made, instead of places of profit, places of expense and burthen.

Ambition and avarice [he said] are each of them strong
Passions, and when they are united in the same Persons,
and have the same Objects in view for their
Gratification, they are too strong for Public Spirit
and Love of Country, and are apt to produce the most
violent Factions and Contentions. They should therefore
be separated, and made to act one against the other.
Those Places, to speak in our old stile (Brother Type)
may be for the good of the _Chapel_, but they are bad
for the Master, as they create constant Quarrels that
hinder the Business. For example, here are near two
Months that your Government has been employed _in
getting its form to press_; which is not yet fit to
_work on_, every Page of it being _squabbled_, and the
whole ready to fall into _pye_. The Founts too must be
very scanty, or strangely _out of sorts_, since your
_Compositors_ cannot find either _upper_ or _lower case
Letters_ sufficient to set the word ADMINISTRATION, but
are forc'd to be continually _turning for them_.
However, to return to common (tho' perhaps too saucy)
Language, don't despair; you have still one resource
left, and that not a bad one, since it may reunite the
Empire. We have some Remains of Affection for you, and
shall always be ready to receive and take care of you
in Case of Distress. So if you have not Sense and
Virtue enough to govern yourselves, e'en dissolve your
present old crazy Constitution, and _send members to
Congress_.

This is the letter that Franklin said was mere chitchat between themselves over the second bottle. Where America was concerned, Strahan was almost credulous enough to have even swallowed the statement in Franklin's humorous letter "To the Editor of a Newspaper," written about the time of the Stamp Act in ridicule of English ignorance respecting America, that the grand leap of the whale in his chase of the cod up the Fall of Niagara was esteemed by all who had seen it as one of the finest spectacles in Nature. In 1783, Captain Nathaniel Falconer, another faithful friend of Franklin, wrote to him with the true disregard of an old sea-dog for spelling and syntax: "I have been over to your old friends Mr. Strawns and find him just the same man, believes every Ly he hears against the United States, the French Army and our Army have been killing each other, and that we shall be glad to come to this country again." In reply, Franklin said: "I have still a regard for Mr. Strahan in remembrance of our ancient Friendship, tho' he has as a Member of Parliament dipt his Hands in our Blood. He was always as credulous as you find him." And, if what Franklin further says in this letter is true, Strahan was not only credulous himself but not above publishing mendacious letters about America as written from New York, which in point of fact were fabricated in London. A little over a year later, when the broken bones of the ancient friendship had reknit, Franklin had his chance to remind Strahan of the extent to which he and those of the same mind with him had been deceived by their gross misconceptions of America. His opportunity came in the form of a reply to a letter from Strahan withholding his assent from the idea of Franklin, so utterly repugnant to the working principles of Strahan's party associates, that public service should be rendered gratuitously. "There are, I make no doubt," said Franklin "many wise and able Men, who would take as much Pleasure in governing for nothing, as they do in playing Chess for nothing. It would be one of the noblest of Amusements." Then, when he has fortified the proposition by some real or fancied illustrations, drawn from French usages, he proceeds to unburden his mind to Strahan with a degree of candor that must have made the latter wince a little at times.

I allow you [he said] all the Force of your Joke upon
the Vagrancy of our Congress. They have a right to sit
_where_ they please, of which perhaps they have made
too much Use by shifting too often. But they have two
other Rights; those of sitting _when_ they please, and
as _long_ as they please, in which methinks they have
the advantage of your Parliament; for they cannot be
dissolved by the Breath of a Minister, or sent packing
as you were the other day, when it was your earnest
desire to have remained longer together.

You "fairly acknowledge, that the late War terminated
quite contrary to your Expectation." Your expectation
was ill founded; for you would not believe your old
Friend, who told you repeatedly, that by those Measures
England would lose her Colonies, as Epictetus warned in
vain his Master that he would break his Leg. You
believ'd rather the Tales you heard of our Poltroonery
and Impotence of Body and Mind. Do you not remember the
Story you told me of the Scotch sergeant, who met with
a Party of Forty American Soldiers, and, tho' alone,
disarm'd them all, and brought them in Prisoners? A
Story almost as Improbable as that of the Irishman, who
pretended to have alone taken and brought in Five of
the Enemy by _surrounding_ them. And yet, my Friend,
sensible and Judicious as you are, but partaking of the
general Infatuation, you seemed to believe it.

The Word _general_ puts me in mind of a General, your
General Clarke, who had the Folly to say in my hearing
at Sir John Pringle's, that, with a Thousand British
grenadiers, he would undertake to go from one end of
America to the other, and geld all the Males, partly by
force and partly by a little Coaxing. It is plain he
took us for a species of Animals, very little superior
to Brutes. The Parliament too believ'd the stories of
another foolish General, I forget his Name, that the
Yankeys never _felt bold_. Yankey was understood to be
a sort of Yahoo, and the Parliament did not think the
Petitions of such Creatures were fit to be received and
read in so wise an Assembly. What was the consequence
of this monstrous Pride and Insolence? You first sent
small Armies to subdue us, believing them more than
sufficient, but soon found yourselves obliged to send
greater; these, whenever they ventured to penetrate our
Country beyond the Protection of their Ships, were
either repulsed and obliged to scamper out, or were
surrounded, beaten and taken Prisoners. An America
Planter, who had never seen Europe, was chosen by us to
Command our Troops, and continued during the whole War.
This Man sent home to you, one after another, five of
your best Generals baffled, their Heads bare of
Laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their
Employers.

Your contempt of our Understandings, in Comparison with
your own, appeared to be not much better founded than
that of our Courage, if we may judge by this
Circumstance, that, in whatever Court of Europe a
Yankey negociator appeared, the wise British Minister
was routed, put in a passion, pick'd a quarrel with
your Friends, and was sent home with a Flea in his Ear.

But after all, my dear Friend, do not imagine that I am
vain enough to ascribe our Success to any superiority
in any of those Points. I am too well acquainted with
all the Springs and Levers of our Machine, not to see,
that our human means were unequal to our undertaking,
and that, if it had not been for the Justice of our
Cause, and the consequent Interposition of Providence,
in which we had Faith, we must have been ruined. If I
had ever before been an Atheist, I should now have been
convinced of the Being and Government of a Deity! It is
he who abases the Proud and favours the Humble. May we
never forget his Goodness to us, and may our future
Conduct manifest our Gratitude.

It was characteristic of Franklin to open his heart to a friend in this candid way even upon sensitive topics, and there can be no better proof of the instinctive confidence of his friends in the essential good feeling that underlay such candor than the fact that they never took offence at utterances of this sort. They knew too well the constancy of affection and placability of temper which caused him to justly say of himself in a letter to Strahan, "I like immortal friendships, but not immortal enmities."

The retrospective letter from which we have just quoted had its genial afterglow as all Franklin's letters had, when he had reason to think that he had written something at which a relative or a friend might take umbrage.

But let us leave these serious Reflections [he went
on], and converse with our usual Pleasantry. I remember
your observing once to me as we sat together in the
House of Commons, that no two Journeymen Printers,
within your Knowledge, had met with such Success in the
World as ourselves. You were then at the head of your
Profession, and soon afterwards became a Member of
Parliament. I was an Agent for a few Provinces, and now
act for them all. But we have risen by different Modes.
I, as a Republican Printer, always liked a Form well
_plain'd down_; being averse to those _overbearing_
Letters that hold their Heads so _high_, as to hinder
their Neighbours from appearing. You, as a Monarchist,
chose to work upon _Crown_ Paper, and found it
profitable; while I work'd upon _pro patria_ (often
call'd _Fools Cap_) with no less advantage. Both our
_Heaps hold out_ very well, and we seem likely to make
a pretty good day's Work of it. With regard to Public
Affairs (to continue in the same stile) it seems to me
that the Compositors in your Chapel do not _cast off
their Copy_ well, nor perfectly understand _Imposing_;
their _Forms_, too, are continually pester'd by the
_Outs_ and _Doubles_, that are not easy to be
corrected. And I think they were wrong in laying aside
some _Faces_, and particularly certain _Headpieces_,
that would have been both useful and ornamental. But,
Courage! The Business may still flourish with good
Management; and the Master become as rich as any of the
Company.

Less than two years after these merry words were penned, Franklin wrote to Andrew Strahan, Strahan's son, saying, "I condole with you most sincerely on the Departure of your good Father and Mother, my old and beloved Friends."

Equally dear to Franklin, though in a different way, was Jonathan Shipley, the Bishop of St. Asaph's, whom he termed in a letter to Georgiana, one of the Bishop's daughters, "that most honoured and ever beloved Friend." In this same letter, Franklin speaks of the Bishop as the "good Bishop," and then, perhaps, not unmindful of the unflinching servility with which the Bench of Bishops had supported the American policy of George III., exclaims, "Strange, that so simple a Character should sufficiently distinguish one of that sacred Body!"

During the dispute with the Colonies, the Bishop was one of the wise Englishmen, who could have settled the questions at issue between England and America, to the ultimate satisfaction of both countries, with little difficulty, if they had been given a _carte blanche_ to agree with Franklin on the terms upon which the future dependence of America was to be based. Two productions of his, the "Sermon before the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts" and his "Speech intended to have been spoken on the Bill for Altering the Charters of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay," were among the compositions which really influenced the course of the events that preceded the American Revolution. We know from Franklin's pen that the sermon was for a time "universally approved and applauded," and, in letters to Thomas Cushing, he said that the speech was admired in England as a "Masterpiece of Eloquence and Wisdom," and "had an extraordinary Effect, in changing the Sentiments of Multitudes with regard to America." For both sermon and speech the Bishop was all the more to be honored by Americans, because, as Franklin observed to Galloway of the sermon, the Bishop's censure of the mother country's treatment of the Colonies, however tenderly expressed, could not recommend him at court or conduce in the least to his promotion. On the contrary, it probably cost him the most splendid temporal reward that could be conferred upon a Churchman, the Archbishopric of Canterbury; for, when Charles James Fox was desirous of elevating him to that exalted office, the King defeated his intentions by hastily appointing another person to it.

At Chilbolton, by Twyford, the country seat of the Bishop, some of the most pleasant days that Franklin spent in England were passed. So fond of Franklin were the Bishop and his wife that the latter carried in her memory even the ages of all Franklin's children and grandchildren. As he was on the point of leaving Twyford, at the end of the three weeks' visit, during which he began the _Autobiography_, she insisted on his remaining that day, so that they might all celebrate the anniversary of Benjamin Bache's birth together. Accordingly, at dinner there was among other things a floating island, such as the hosts always had on the several birthdays of their own six children; all of whom, with one exception, were present as well as a clergyman's widow upwards of one hundred years old. The story is thus told by Franklin to his wife:

The chief Toast of the Day was Master Benjamin Bache,
which the venerable old Lady began in a Bumper of
Mountain. The Bishop's Lady politely added, _and that
he may be as good a Man as his Grandfather_. I said I
hop'd he would be _much better_. The Bishop, still more
complaisant than his Lady, said, "We will compound the
Matter, and be contented, if he should not prove
_quite_ so good." This Chitchat is to yourself only,
in return for some of yours about your Grandson, and
must only be read to Sally, and not spoken of to
anybody else; for you know how People add and alter
Silly stories that they hear, and make them appear ten
times more silly.

The room at the Bishop's home, in which the _Autobiography_ was begun, was ever subsequently known as Franklin's room. After his return to America from France, Catherine Louisa Shipley, one of the Bishop's daughters, wrote to him, "We never walk in the garden without seeing Dr. Franklin's room and thinking of the work that was begun in it." In a letter to the Bishop in 1771, Franklin says:

I regret my having been oblig'd to leave that most
agreeable Retirement which good Mrs. Shipley put me so
kindly in possession of. I now breathe with Reluctance
the Smoke of London, when I think of the sweet Air of
Twyford. And by the Time your Races are over, or about
the Middle of next Month (if it should then not be
unsuitable to your Engagements or other Purposes) I
promise myself the Happiness of spending another Week
or two where I so pleasantly spent the last.

Close behind this letter, went also one of his "books," which he hoped that Miss Georgiana, another daughter of the Bishop, would be good enough to accept as a small mark of his "Regard for her philosophic Genius," and a quantity of American dried apples for Mrs. Shipley. A month later, he writes to the Bishop that he had been prevented from coming to Twyford by business, but that he purposed to set out on the succeeding Tuesday for "that sweet Retreat." How truly sweet it was to him a letter that he subsequently wrote to Georgiana from Passy enables us in some measure to realize. Among other things, it contained these winning and affecting words:

Accept my Thanks for your Friendly Verses and good
Wishes. How many Talents you possess! Painting,
Poetry, Languages, etc., etc. All valuable, but your
good Heart is worth the whole.

Your mention of the Summer House brings fresh to my
mind all the Pleasures I enjoyed in the sweet Retreat
at Twyford: the Hours of agreeable and instructive
Conversation with the amiable Family at Table; with its
Father alone; the delightful Walks in the Gardens and
neighbouring Grounds. Pleasures past and gone forever!
Since I have had your Father's Picture I am grown more
covetous of the rest; every time I look at your second
Drawing I have regretted that you have not given to
your Juno the Face of Anna Maria, to Venus that of
Emily or Betsey, and to Cupid that of Emily's Child, as
it would have cost you but little more Trouble. I must,
however, beg that you will make me up a compleat Set of
your little Profiles, which are more easily done. You
formerly obliged me with that of the Father, an
excellent one. Let me also have that of the good
Mother, and of all the Children. It will help me to
fancy myself among you, and to enjoy more perfectly in
Idea, the Pleasure of your Society. My little
Fellow-Traveller, the sprightly Hetty, with whose
sensible Prattle I was so much entertained, why does
she not write to me? If Paris affords anything that any
of you wish to have, mention it. You will oblige me. It
affords everything but _Peace_! Ah! When shall we again
enjoy that Blessing.

Previously he had written to Thomas Digges that the portrait of the Bishop mentioned by him had not come to hand; nor had he heard anything of it, and that he was anxious to see it, "having no hope of living to see again the much lov'd and respected original." His request for the little profiles of the Shipleys was complied with, we know, because in a letter to the Bishop some two years afterwards he said: "Your Shades are all plac'd in a Row over my Fireplace, so that I not only have you always in my Mind, but constantly before my Eyes." This letter was written in reply to a letter from the Bishop which was the first to break the long silence that the war between Great Britain and America had imposed upon the two friends. "After so long a Silence, and the long Continuance of its unfortunate Causes," Franklin began, "a Line from you was a Prognostic of happier Times approaching, when we may converse and communicate freely, without Danger from the Malevolence of Men enrag'd by the ill success of their distracted Projects."

Among the entries in the desultory Journal that Franklin kept of his return from France to America, are these relating to the visit paid him at Southampton by the Bishop: "Wrote a letter to the Bishop of St. Asaph, acquainting him with my arrival, and he came with his lady and daughter, Miss Kitty, after dinner, to see us; they talk of staying here as long as we do. Our meeting was very affectionate." For two or three days, the reunited friends all lodged at the Star, at Southampton, and took their meals together. The day before his ship sailed, Franklin invited the Bishop and his wife and daughter to accompany him on board, and, when he retired, it was with the expectation that they would spend the night on the ship, but, when he awoke the next morning, he found that they had thoughtfully left the ship, after he retired, to relieve the poignancy of the farewell, and that he was off on his westward course.

In his last letter to the Bishop, Franklin expresses his regret that conversation between them at Southampton had been cut short so frequently by third persons, and thanks him for the pleasure that he derived from the copy of Paley's _Moral Philosophy_, given to him by the Bishop there. Along with the usual contradiction of the English and Loyalist view at this time of our national condition, and the usual picture of himself encircled by his grandchildren, he indulges in these striking reflections about the chequered fate of parental expectations:

He that raises a large Family does, indeed, while he
lives to observe them, _stand_, as Watts says, _a
broader Mark for Sorrow_; but then he stands a broader
Mark for Pleasure too. When we launch our little Fleet
of Barques into the Ocean, bound to different Ports, we
hope for each a prosperous Voyage; but contrary Winds,
hidden Shoals, Storms, and Enemies come in for a Share
in the Disposition of Events; and though these occasion
a Mixture of Disappointment, yet, considering the
Risque where we can make no Insurance, we should think
ourselves happy if some return with Success.

Timed as they were, the force of these reflections were not likely to be lost upon the Bishop. Some years before, Georgiana had married with his bitter disapproval Francis Hare-Naylor, the writer of plays and novels, and author of the _History of the Helvetic Republics_, who was so unfortunate as to be arrested for debt during his courtship, while in the episcopal coach of the Bishop with Georgiana and her parents. After the Bishop refused to recognize the husband, the Duchess of Devonshire settled an annuity of three hundred pounds a year upon the couple, and among the wise, weighty letters of Franklin is one that he wrote from France to Georgiana, after her marriage, in which he replies to her inquiries about the opening that America would afford to a young married couple, and refers to this annuity. The concluding portion of this letter also has its value as another illustration of the calm manner in which Franklin looked forward to his end. He tells Georgiana that, if he should be in America, when they were there, his best counsels and services would not be wanting, and that to see her happily settled and prosperous there would give him infinite pleasure, but that, of course, if he ever arrived there, his stay could be but short.

Franklin survived the Bishop, and his letter to Catherine, in reply to hers, announcing the death of her father, is in his best vein.

That excellent man has then left us! His departure is a
loss, not to his family and friends only, but to his
nation, and to the world; for he was intent on doing
good, had wisdom to devise the means, and talents to
promote them. His "Sermon before the Society for
Propagating the Gospel," and his "Speech intended to
have been spoken," are proofs of his ability as well as
his humanity. Had his counsels in those pieces been
attended to by the ministers, how much bloodshed might
have been prevented, and how much expense and disgrace
to the nation avoided!

Your reflections on the constant calmness and composure
attending his death are very sensible. Such instances
seem to show, that the good sometimes enjoy in dying a
foretaste of the happy state they are about to enter.

According to the course of years, I should have quitted
this world long before him. I shall however not be long
in following. I am now in my eighty-fourth year, and
the last year has considerably enfeebled me; so that I
hardly expect to remain another. You will then, my dear
friend, consider this as probably the last line to be
received from me, and as a taking leave. Present my
best and most sincere respects to your good mother, and
love to the rest of the family, to whom I wish all
happiness; and believe me to be, while I _do_ live,
yours most affectionately.

His friendship in this instance, as usual, embraced the whole family. In a letter in 1783 to Sir William Jones, the accomplished lawyer and Oriental scholar, who married Anna Maria, one of the Bishop's daughters, he said that he flattered himself that he might in the ensuing summer be able to undertake a trip to England for the pleasure of seeing once more his dear friends there, among whom the Bishop and his family stood foremost in his estimation and affection.

To the Bishop himself he wrote from Passy in the letter which mentioned the shades of the Shipleys above his fireplace: "Four daughters! how rich! I have but one, and she, necessarily detain'd from me at 1000 leagues distance. I feel the Want of that tender Care of me, which might be expected from a Daughter, and would give the World for one."

And later in this letter he says with the bountiful affection, which made him little less than a member of the families of some of his friends, "Please to make my best Respects acceptable to Mrs. Shipley, and embrace for me tenderly all our dear Children."

At the request of Catherine, he wrote the _Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams_ in which hygiene and the importance of preserving a good conscience are so gracefully blended, and received from her a reply, in which, after declaring that it flattered her exceedingly that he should employ so much of his precious time in complying with her request, she put to him the question, "But where do you read that Methusaleh slept in the open air? I have searched the Bible in vain to find it."

When Sir William Jones was on the eve of being married to Anna Maria, and of sailing away to India, where he was to win so much distinction, Franklin wrote to him the letter already mentioned, joining his blessing on the union with that of the good Bishop, and expressing the hope that the prospective bridegroom might return from that corrupting country with a great deal of money honestly acquired, and with full as much virtue as he carried out.

The affection that he felt for Catherine and Georgiana, his letters to them, from which we have already quoted, sufficiently reveal. Of the four daughters, Georgiana was, perhaps, his favorite, and she is an example with Mary Stevenson of the subtle magnetism that his intellect and nature had for feminine affinities of mind and temperament. It was to Georgiana, when a child, that he wrote his well-known letter containing an epitaph on her squirrel, which had been dispatched by a dog. The letter and epitaph are good enough specimens of his humor to be quoted in full:

DEAR MISS,

I lament with you most sincerely the unfortunate end of
poor Mungo. Few squirrels were better accomplished; for
he had had a good education, had travelled far, and
seen much of the world. As he had the honor of being,
for his virtues, your favourite, he should not go, like
common skuggs, without an elegy or an epitaph. Let us
give him one in the monumental style and measure,
which, being neither prose nor verse, is perhaps the
properest for grief; since to use common language would
look as if we were not affected, and to make rhymes
would seem trifling in sorrow.

EPITAPH

Alas! poor Mungo!
Happy wert thou, hadst thou known
Thy own felicity.
Remote from the fierce bald eagle,
Tyrant of thy native woods,
Thou hadst nought to fear from his piercing talons,
Nor from the murdering gun
Of the thoughtless sportsman.
Safe in thy wired castle,
GRIMALKIN never could annoy thee.
Daily wert thou fed with the choicest viands,
By the fair hand of an indulgent mistress;
But, discontented,
Thou wouldst have more freedom.
Too soon, alas! didst thou obtain it;
And wandering,
Thou art fallen by the fangs of wanton, cruel Ranger!
Learn hence,
Ye who blindly seek more liberty,
Whether subjects, sons, squirrels or daughters,
That apparent restraint may be real protection;
Yielding peace and plenty
With security.

You see, my dear Miss, how much more decent and proper
this broken style is, than if we were to say, by way of
epitaph,

Here SKUGG
Lies snug,
As a bug
In a rug.

and yet, perhaps, there are people in the world of so
little feeling as to think that this would be a
good-enough epitaph for poor Mungo.

If you wish it, I shall procure another to succeed him;
but perhaps you will now choose some other amusement.

Two of Georgiana's letters to Franklin, after his arrival in France, are very interesting, and one of them especially could not have been written by any but a highly gifted and accomplished woman. In this letter, the first of the two, she begins by expressing her joy at unexpectedly receiving a letter from him.

How good you were [she exclaimed] to send me your
direction, but I fear I must not make use of it as
often as I could wish, since my father says it will be
prudent not to write in the present situation of
affairs. I am not of an age to be so very prudent, and
the only thought that occurred to me was your
suspecting that my silence proceeded from other
motives. I could not support the idea of your believing
that I love and esteem you less than I did some few
years ago. I therefore write this once without my
father's knowledge. You are the first man that ever
received a private letter from me, and in this instance
I feel that my intentions justify my conduct; but I
must entreat that you will take no notice of my
writing, when next I have the happiness of hearing from
you.

She then proceeds to tell Franklin all about her father, her mother, her sister Emily and Emily's daughter, "a charming little girl, near fifteen months old, whom her aunts reckon a prodigy of sense and beauty." The rest of her sisters, she said, continued in _statu quo_. Whether that proceeded from the men being difficult or from _their_ being difficult, she left him to determine.

His friends all loved him almost as much as she did; as much she would not admit to be possible. Dr. Pringle had made her extremely happy the preceding winter by giving her a print of her excellent friend, which, was certainly very like him, although it wanted the addition of his own hair to make it complete; but, as it was, she prized it infinitely, now that the dear original was absent. She then has a word to say about Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, Gibbon's _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ and the _Economics_, which she had read with great attention, as indeed everything else she could meet with relative to Socrates; for she fancied she could discover in each trait of that admirable man's character a strong resemblance between him and her much-loved friend--the same clearness of judgment, the same uprightness of intention and the same superior understanding. Other words are bestowed on the account which Sir William Hamilton had lately given her of a new electrical machine invented in Italy, the happiness that she would enjoy, if Franklin were in England to explain it to her, and the envy excited in her by the opportunities that his grandson had for showing him kindness and attention. "Did my family," she further declares, "know of my writing, my letter would scarce contain the very many things they would desire me to say for them. They continue to admire and love you as much as they did formerly, nor can any time or event in the least change their sentiments."

She then concludes partly in French and partly in English in these words:

Adieu, mon cher Socrate; conservez-vous pour l'amour de
moi, et pour mille autres raisons plus importants. Je
ne vous en dirai pas d'advantage pour aujourd'hui, mais
je veux esperer de vous entretenir plus a mon aise,
avant que soit longue. Pray write whenever a safe
conveyance opens, since the receiving letters is
reckoned very different from answering them. I must
once more repeat nobody knows of this scroll; "a word
to the wise,"--as Poor Richard says.

In her second letter, Georgiana speaks of the difficulty she experienced in having her letters conveyed safely to Passy. "Strange," she declared, "that I should be under the necessity of concealing from the world a correspondence which it is the pride and glory of my heart to maintain." His _Dialogue with the Gout_, she said, was written with his own cheerful pleasantry, and _La belle et la mauvaise Jambe_ recalled to her mind those happy hours they once passed in his society, where they were never amused without learning some useful truth, and where she first acquired a taste _pour la conversation badinante and reflechie_. Her father grew every year fonder of the peace of Twyford; having found his endeavors to serve his country ineffectual, he had yielded to a torrent which it was no longer in his power to control. Sir John Pringle (Franklin's friend) had left London and gone to reside in Scotland; she feared that he was much straitened in his circumstances; he looked ill and was vastly changed from what he remembered him; Dr. Priestley (another friend of Franklin) was then on a short visit to his friends in town; good Dr. Price (another friend of Franklin) called on them often, and gave them hopes of a visit to Twyford.

The letter also informed Franklin that the first opportunity that they had of sending a parcel to Paris he might expect _all_ their shades; and expressed her gratitude to Mr. Jones for undertaking the care of her letter, and giving her an opportunity of assuring Franklin how much she did and ever should continue to love him.

Catherine Ray was not far wrong when she spoke of Franklin as a conjurer. Catherine Shipley's letter to him, after she had parted with him at Southampton, though without the romantic flush of these two letters, spoke the same general language of deep-seated affection. She was quite provoked with herself, she said, when she got to Southampton that she had not thought of something, such as a pincushion, to leave with him, that might have been useful to him during the voyage to remind him of her. "Did you ever taste the ginger cake," she asked, "and think it had belonged to your fellow-traveller? In short, I want some excuse for asking whether you ever think about me." And from this letter it appears that he had a place in the hearts of Emily and Betsey too. She had had a letter from Emily, Catherine further said, the night after she got home, to inquire whether his stay at Southampton would allow time for her coming to see him. Betsey regretted much that she had lost that happiness, and the writer had written to dear Georgiana a long account of him, for she knew every circumstance would be interesting to her. "Indeed, my dear sir," the letter ended, "from my father and mother down to their _youngest child_, we all respect and love you."[34]

When Franklin was told by Georgiana that Sir John Pringle was pinched by poverty, and looked ill, he must have been sorely distressed; for Sir John he once described as his "steady, good friend." A pupil of Boerhaave, a high authority upon the application of sanitary science to the prevention of dysentery and hospital fevers, physician to the Queen, and President of the Royal Society, Dr. Pringle was one of the distinguished men of his time. What churchmen were to the preservation of classical learning, before teaching became a special calling, physicians were to general scientific knowledge before science became such; and, among these physicians, he occupied an honorable position.[35] "His speech in giving the last medal, (of the Royal Society) on the subject of the discoveries relating to the air," Franklin wrote to Jan Ingenhousz, "did him great honour." He was quite unlike the courtiers who sought to convince King Canute that he could stay the incoming tide by his command, as George III. found out when he asked him, after the outbreak of the American Revolution, to pronounce an opinion in favor of the substitution of blunt for pointed lightning rods on Kew Palace. The laws of nature, Sir John hinted, were not changeable at royal pleasure, but positions of honor and profit he soon learnt, if he did not know it before, were; for he fell into such disfavor with the King that he had to resign as President of the Royal Society, and was deprived of his post as physician to the Queen. The circumstances in which his disgrace originated leave us at but little loss to understand why the King should have become such a dogged partisan of blunt conductors. Prior to the Revolution, Franklin had been consulted by the British Board of Ordnance as to the best means of protecting the arsenals at Purfleet from lightning, and, after he had visited the powder magazine there, the Royal Society, too, was asked by the Board for its opinion. The Society accordingly appointed a committee of learned men, including Cavendish and Franklin, to make a report on the subject. All of the committee except Benjamin Wilson, who dissented, reported in favor of pointed conductors as against blunt ones, and Franklin, the inventor of pointed lightning rods, drew up the report. The scientific controversy that followed soon assumed a political character, when Franklin dropped the philosophical task of snatching the lightning from the skies for the rebellious task of snatching the sceptre from a tyrant. When he heard that George III. was, like Ajax, obstinate enough to defy even the lightning, he wrote to an unknown correspondent:

The King's changing his _pointed_ conductors for
_blunt_ ones is, therefore, a matter of small
importance to me. If I had a wish about it, it would be
that he had rejected them altogether as ineffectual.
For it is only since he thought himself and family safe
from the thunder of Heaven, that he dared to use his
own thunder in destroying his innocent subjects.

Dr. Ingenhousz, however, was not so self-contained, and made such an angry attack on Wilson that Franklin, who invariably relied in such cases upon silence and the principle that Truth is a cat with nine lives to defend him, laughingly remarked, "He seems as much heated about this _one point_, as the Jansenists and Molinists were about the _five_." As for King George, he had at least the satisfaction of realizing that his people still had a ready fund of wit for timely use. One homely couplet of the period, referring to Franklin's famous kite, ran in this way:

"He with a kite drew lightning from the sky,
And like a kite he pecked King George's eye."

Another more polished poet penned these neat lines:

"While you, great George, for knowledge hunt,
And sharp conductors change for blunt,
The Empire's out of joint.
Franklin another course pursues
And all your thunder heedless views
By keeping to the point."

If we may believe Franklin, Sir John held the efficacy of the healing art in very moderate esteem. The reader has already been told of the humorous manner in which he let it be known that, in his opinion, of the two classes of practitioners, old women and regular physicians, the former had done the most to save the honor of the profession. Franklin also informed Dr. Rush that Sir John "once told him 92 fevers out of 100 cured themselves, 4 were cured by Art, and 4 proved fatal." But many people must have had a more favorable opinion of the professional value of Sir John than Sir John himself had, for his "Conversations" were in high repute. On this point, there is some evidence in a letter from Franklin to Dr. Thomas Bond, who was desirous of giving his son Richard the benefit of a foreign medical education. Referring to Sir John, Franklin wrote:

Every Wednesday Evening he admits young Physicians and
Surgeons to a Conversation at his House, which is
thought very improving to them. I will endeavour to
introduce your Son there when he comes to London. And
to tell you frankly my Opinion, I suspect there is more
valuable knowledge in Physic to be learnt from the
honest candid Observations of an old Practitioner, who
is past all desire of more Business, having made his
Fortune, who has none of the Professional Interest in
keeping up a Parade of Science to draw Pupils, and who
by Experience has discovered the Inefficacy of most
Remedies and Modes of Practice, than from all the
formal Lectures of all the Universities upon Earth.

That Dr. John cured at least one patient, we are told by Dr. Rush on the authority of Franklin, but it was Only himself of a tremor, and that by simply ceasing to take snuff. Dr. Pringle and himself, Franklin told Dr. Rush, observed that tremors of the hands were more frequent in France than elsewhere, and probably from the excessive use of snuff. "He concluded," says Dr. Rush, "that there was no great advantage in using tobacco in any way, for that he had kept company with persons who used it all his life, and no one had ever advised him to use it. The Doctor in the 81st year of his age declared he had never snuffed, chewed, or smoked."

Among the persons who sought Sir John's professional advice was Franklin himself. It was in relation to a cutaneous trouble which vexed him for some fourteen years, and broke out afresh when he was in his eighty-third year. But the best medicine that Franklin ever obtained from Sir John was his companionship upon two continental tours, one of which was inspired by the latter's desire to drink the waters at Pyrmont, and the other by the attractions of the French capital. When the news of Sir John's death reached Franklin at Passy he paid the usual heartfelt tribute. "We have lost our common Friend," he wrote to Jan Ingenhousz, "the excellent Pringle. How many pleasing hours you and I have pass'd together in his Company!"

Another English physician, for whom Franklin entertained a feeling of deep affection, was the Quaker Dr. John Fothergill. After the death of this friend, in a letter to Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, still another friend of his, and one of the famous English physicians of the eighteenth century, he expressed this extraordinary opinion of Dr. Fothergill's worth: "If we may estimate the goodness of a man by his disposition to do good, and his constant endeavours and success in doing it, I can hardly conceive that a better man has ever existed." No faint praise to be uttered by the founder of the Junto and one who valued above all things the character of a doer of good! Like Sir John Pringle, Dr. Fothergill belonged to the class of physicians who pursued medicine, as if it were a mistress not to be wooed except with the favor of the other members of the scientific sisterhood. He was an ardent botanist, and his collection of botanical specimens and paintings on vellum of rare plants was among the remarkable collections of his age. Two of his correspondents were the Pennsylvania botanists, John Bartram and Humphrey Marshall, who brought to his knowledge a flora in many shining instances unknown to the woods and fields of the Old World. His medical writings were held in high esteem, and were published after his death under the editorial supervision of Dr. Lettsom.

As a practitioner, he was eminently successful, and numbered among his patients many representatives of the most powerful and exclusive circles in London. What the extent of his practice was we can infer from a question put to him by Franklin in 1764.

By the way [he asked], when do you intend to live?--_i.
e._, to enjoy life. When will you retire to your villa,
give yourself repose, delight in viewing the operations
of nature in the vegetable creation, assist her in her
works, get your ingenious friends at times about you,
make them happy with your conversation, and enjoy
theirs: or, if alone, amuse yourself with your books
and elegant collections?

To be hurried about perpetually from one sick chamber
to another is not living. Do you please yourself with
the fancy that you are doing good? You are mistaken.
Half the lives you save are not worth saving, as being
useless, and almost all the other half ought not to be
saved, as being mischievous. Does your conscience never
hint to you the impiety of being in constant warfare
against the plans of Providence? Disease was intended
as the punishment of intemperance, sloth, and other
vices, and the example of that punishment was intended
to promote and strengthen the opposite virtues.

All of which, of course, except the suggestion about retirement, which was quite in keeping with Franklin's conception of a rational life, was nothing more than humorous paradox on the part of a man who loved all his fellow-creatures too much to despair of any of them.

When Franklin himself was seized with a grave attack of illness shortly after his arrival in England on his first mission, Doctor Fothergill was his physician, and seems to have cupped and physicked him with drastic assiduity. The patient was not a very docile one, for he wrote to Deborah that, too soon thinking himself well, he ventured out twice, and both times got fresh cold, and fell down again; and that his "good doctor" grew very angry with him for acting contrary to his cautions and directions, and obliged him to promise more observance for the future. Always to Franklin the Doctor remained the "good Doctor Fothergill." Even in a codicil to his will, in bequeathing to one of his friends the silver cream pot given to him by the doctor, with the motto "Keep bright the chain," he refers to him by that designation.

Nor were his obligations as a patient the only obligations that Franklin owed to this friend. When his early letters on electricity were sent over to England, only to be laughed at in the first instance, they happened to pass under the eye of the Doctor. He saw their merit, advised their publication, and wrote the preface to the pamphlet in which they were published by Cave. But the things for which Franklin valued the Doctor most were his public spirit and philanthropy. He was well known in Philadelphia, and, when Franklin arrived in London in 1757, he was actively assisted by the Doctor in his effort to secure a settlement of the dispute over taxation between the Pennsylvania Assembly and the Proprietaries. Afterwards, when Franklin's second mission to England was coming to an end, the Doctor was drawn deeply into a vain attempt made by Lord Howe and his sister and David Barclay, another Quaker friend of Franklin, to compose the American controversy by an agreement with Franklin. For this business, among other reasons, because of "his daily Visits among the Great, in the Practice of his Profession," of which Franklin speaks in his history of these negotiations, he would have been a most helpful ally; if the quarrel had not become so embittered. But, as it was, the knot, which the negotiators were striving to disentangle, was too intricate for anything but the edge of the sword. When the negotiations came to nothing, the good Doctor, who knew the sentiments of "the Great" in London at that time, if any private person did, had no advice to give to Franklin except, when he returned to America, to get certain of the Doctor's friends in Philadelphia, and two or three other persons together, and to inform them that, whatever specious pretences were offered by the English ministry, they were all hollow, and that to obtain a larger field, on which to fatten a herd of worthless parasites, was all that was regarded. It was a bad day, indeed, for England when one of the best men in the land could hold such language.

The silk experiment in Pennsylvania furnished still another congenial field for the co-operation of Franklin and Doctor Fothergill; and, in a letter to Franklin, the latter also declared in startlingly modern terms that, in the warmth of his affection for mankind, he could wish to see "the institution of a College of Justice, where the claims of sovereigns should be weighed, an award given, and war only made on him who refused submission."