A Benjamin Franklin Reader (18 page)

Although they shared values, Franklin was far more worldly and intellectual than his wife was, or ever wanted ever to be. During her adult life, Deborah never seems to have spent a night away from her home on Market Street within two blocks of the house where she was raised. Franklin, on the other hand, loved to travel, and although he would occasionally express some hope that she would accompany him, he knew that she was not so inclined. They respected each other’s independence, perhaps to a fault. For fifteen of the last seventeen years of Deborah’s life, Franklin would be away, including when she died. He would also, as we shall see, form close friendships and diverting flirtations with other women—though no committed romantic or sexual relationships—and his letters to Deborah, while frequent and chatty, were rarely emotionally or intellectually engaging.

Nevertheless, their mutual affection, respect, loyalty and devotion—and their sense of partnership—would endure. The only extant painting of Deborah makes her seem like a sensible and determined woman, plump and plain but not unattractive. It was a relationship that did not inspire great romantic verse, but it did produce an endearing ballad that he put into the mouth of Poor Richard. In it Franklin paid tribute to “My Plain Country Joan,” his nickname for Deborah, and blessed the day he made her his own.

I S
ING
M
Y
P
LAIN
C
OUNTRY
J
OAN
,
C
. 1742

Throughout his life, Franklin was an unabashed admirer of women, and never prudish. His list of bawdy reasons for preferring older women as mistresses is now, at least in some circles, one of Franklin’s most famous pieces, but it was suppressed by his grandson and other compilers of his papers throughout the nineteenth century as being too indecent to print.

O
LD
M
ISTRESSES
A
POLOGUE
, J
UNE
25, 1745

My dear friend,

I know of no medicine fit to diminish the violent natural inclinations you mention; and if I did, I think I should not communicate it to you. Marriage is the proper remedy. It is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which you are most likely to find solid happiness. Your reasons against entering into it at present, appear to me not well-founded. The circumstantial advantages you have in view by postponing it, are not only uncertain, but they are small in comparison with that of the thing itself, the being
married and settled.
It is the man and woman united that make the complete human being. Separate, she wants his force of body and strength of reason; he, her softness, sensibility and acute discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the world. A single man has not nearly the value he would have in that state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors. If you get a prudent healthy wife, your industry in your profession, with her good economy, will be a fortune sufficient.

But if you will not take this counsel, and persist in thinking a commerce with the sex inevitable, then I repeat my former advice, that in all your amours you should
prefer old women to young ones.
You call this a paradox, and demand my reasons. They are these:

1. Because as they have more knowledge of the world and their minds are better stored with observations, their conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreeable.

2. Because when women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their influence over men, they supply the diminution of beauty by an augmentation of utility. They learn to do a 1000 services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old woman who is not a good woman.

3. Because there is no hazard of children, which irregularly produced may be attended with much inconvenience.

4. Because through more experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an intrigue to prevent suspicion. The commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the affair should happen to be known, considerate people might be rather inclined to excuse an old woman who would kindly take care of a young man, form his manners by her good counsels, and prevent his ruining his health and fortune among mercenary prostitutes.

5. Because in every animal that walks upright, the deficiency of the fluids that fill the muscles appears first in the highest part: the face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the neck; then the breast and arms; the lower parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: so that covering all above with a basket, and regarding only what is below the girdle, it is impossible of two women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all cats are gray, the pleasure of corporal enjoyment with an old woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every knack being by practice capable of improvement.

6. Because the sin is less. The debauching a virgin may be her ruin, and make her for life unhappy.

7. Because the compunction is less. The having made a young girl
miserable
may give you frequent bitter reflections; none of which can attend the making an old woman
happy.

8thly and lastly they are
so grateful!!

Thus much for my paradox. But still I advise you to marry directly; being sincerely your affectionate friend.

“The Speech of Miss Polly Baker” is a tale of sex and woe told from a woman’s point of view, a literary device often used by Franklin that displayed his ability to appreciate the other sex. It purports to recount the speech of a young woman on trial for having a fifth illegitimate child. The light humor of the piece hides the fact that it is actually a sharp attack on hypocritical customs and unfair attitudes toward women and sex. Franklin, who had fathered an illegitimate child before his marriage but taken responsibility for it, is particularly scathing about the double standard that subjects her, but not the men who had sex with her, to humiliation. First published in London, it was then frequently reprinted in England and America without people realizing that it was fiction. Only thirty years later did Franklin reveal that he had written it as a hoax.

T
HE
G
ENERAL
A
DVERTISER
, A
PRIL
15, 1747

May it please the honorable bench to indulge me in a few words: I am a poor unhappy woman, who have no money to fee lawyers to plead for me, being hard put to it to get a tolerable living. I shall not trouble your honors with long speeches; for I have not the presumption to expect, that you may, by any means, be prevailed on to deviate in your sentence from the law, in my favor. All I humbly hope is, that your honors would charitably move the governors’ goodness on my behalf, that my fine may be remitted.

This is the fifth time, gentlemen, that I have been dragged before your court on the same account; twice I have paid heavy fines, and twice have been brought to public punishment, for want of money to pay those fines. This may have been agreeable to the laws, and I don’t dispute it; but since laws are sometimes unreasonable in themselves, and therefore repealed, and others bear too hard on the subject in particular circumstances; and therefore there is left a power somewhat to dispense with the execution of them; I take the liberty to say, that I think this law, by which I am punished, is both unreasonable in itself, and particularly severe with regard to me, who have always lived an inoffensive life in the neighborhood where I was born, and defy my enemies (if I have any) to say I ever wronged man, woman, or child. Abstracted from the law, I cannot conceive (may it please your honors) what the nature of my offence is. I have brought five fine children into the world, at the risk of my life; I have maintained them well by my own industry, without burdening the township, and would have done it better, if it had not been for the heavy charges and fines I have paid.

Can it be a crime (in the nature of things I mean) to add to the number of the king’s subjects, in a new country that really wants people? I own it, I should think it a praise-worthy, rather than a punishable action. I have debauched no other woman’s husband, nor enticed any youth; these things I never was charged with, nor has any one the least cause of complaint against me, unless, perhaps, the minister, or justice, because I have had children without being married, by which they have missed a wedding fee. But, can ever this be a fault of mine? I appeal to your honors.

You are pleased to allow I don’t want sense; but I must be stupefied to the last degree, not to prefer the honorable state of wedlock, to the condition I have lived in. I always was, and still am willing to enter into it; and doubt not my behaving well in it, having all the industry, frugality, fertility, and skill in economy, appertaining to a good wife’s character. I defy any person to say, I ever refused an offer of that sort: on the contrary, I readily consented to the only proposal of marriage that ever was made me, which was when I was a virgin; but too easily confiding in the person’s sincerity that made it, I unhappily lost my own honor, by trusting to his; for he got me with child, and then forsook me: that very person you all know; he is now become a magistrate of this country; and I had hopes he would have appeared this day on the bench, and have endeavored to moderate the court in my favor; then I should have scorned to have mentioned it; but I must now complain of it, as unjust and unequal, that my betrayer and undoer, the first cause of all my faults and miscarriages (if they must be deemed such) should be advanced to honor and power in the government, that punishes my misfortunes with stripes and infamy.

I should be told, ’tis like, that were there no act of assembly in the case, the precepts of religion are violated by my transgressions. If mine, then, is a religious offence, leave it to religious punishments. You have already excluded me from the comforts of your church-communion. Is not that sufficient? You believe I have offended heaven, and must suffer eternal fire: will not that be sufficient? What need is there, then, of your additional fines and whipping? I own, I do not think as you do; for, if I thought what you call a sin, was really such, I could not presumptuously commit it. But, how can it be believed, that heaven is angry at my having children, when to the little done by me towards it, God has been pleased to add his divine skill and admirable workmanship in the formation of their bodies, and crowned it, by furnishing them with rational and immortal souls.

Forgive me, gentlemen, if I talk a little extravagantly on these matters; I am no divine, but if you, gentlemen, must be making laws, do not turn natural and useful actions into crimes, by your prohibitions. But take into your wise consideration, the great and growing number of bachelors in the country, many of whom from the mean fear of the expenses of a family, have never sincerely and honorably courted a woman in their lives; and by their manner of living, leave unproduced (which is little better than murder) hundreds of their posterity to the thousandth generation. Is not this a greater offence against the public good, than mine? Compel them, then, by law, either to marriage, or to pay double the fine of fornication every year.

What must poor young women do, whom custom have forbid to solicit the men, and who cannot force themselves upon husbands, when the laws take no care to provide them any; and yet severely punish them if they do their duty without them; the duty of the first and great command of nature, and of nature’s god,
increase and multiply.
A duty, from the steady performance of which, nothing has been able to deter me; but for its sake, I have hazarded the loss of the public esteem, and have frequently endured public disgrace and punishment; and therefore ought, in my humble opinion, instead of a whipping, to have a statue erected to my memory.