Book of Ages (27 page)
Authors: Jill Lepore
She was probably somewhere between Philadelphia and Boston on March 5, 1770, when, in Boston,
British
soldiers fired on a crowd in front of the Town House, killing five men. Two days after the shooting, in a city of some fifteen thousand people, twelve thousand turned out for the funeral of the first four victims (one injured man still lingered), marching past the Liberty Tree to the Granary Burying Ground, where the caskets were lowered into the ground beneath a single tombstone.
Samuel Adams arranged for Edes to print a report about what happened on King Street under the title
A Short Narrative of the horrid Massacre in Boston;
Adams sent copies of it to
London.
24
Revere engraved a picture of the scene that night (a copy, really, of a drawing made by the accomplished artist and witness to the massacre Henry Pelham, a half brother of
John Singleton Copley’s). He titled it
The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street.
Even if Jane had reached Boston by March 5, she wouldn’t have been out on the streets that night. In Philadelphia, she had fallen down the stone steps at brother’s house; she found it difficult to walk. “My Lamenes continus yet that it is with Grat Pain I walk as far as Dr Coopers meeting,” she wrote Deborah.
25
(“I hope the Hurt you receiv’d will be attended with no bad Consequences,” her brother wrote her.)
26
She seems to have moved into her old house on Hanover Street, near the Orange Tree Inn. “Aunt Mecom is well Settled in the Old place tho almost a N House,” Jonathan Williams Sr. wrote Franklin in August 1770, telling him, too, that he was soon to send his blind son, Josiah, to London, to live with Franklin at Mrs. Stevenson’s house in order to to study
music, accompanied by another of his sons, Jonathan Williams Jr., who would work as Franklin’s clerk. Jane was glad that her favorite nephews, Jonathan and
Josiah Williams, would be going with Franklin to London, but she wrote to her brother to take special care of blind Josiah. (“Josiah says He fears nothing He shall ha[ve] to Incounter so much as your Disaprobatio
of His Sceme.” She hoped Franklin wouldn’t send the young man back. “I tell Him you have seen s[o] much of the Follies of Human Nature & so L[ittle] Els in the comon Run of man kind, that you will know Beter how to Pitty & Advice Him.”)
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But she was weary, and in pain. Her children gave her more trouble than consolation. (“She has indeed been very unfortunate in her Children,” as Franklin gently put it.)
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She wrote to Deborah, to tell her how much she missed her. “I should Admire to come & see & hear all about every thing there wonc a year & stay a fortnight,” she explained.
29
She had no company but her daughter Jane. She missed the friends she had made
in Philadelphia. She missed the news. “I see so few Intilegent People that I know the Least News of any won in the world,” she complained. “I am a Grat Deal a Lone Exept some young persons coming back on Erands, for as I cant go a broad People Dont come to see me & Jeney is a good Deal out.”
She sent Deborah a flurry of questions:
When do you Expect cousen Bache Home? is His wife Like to have a nother child? How Does Mrs Smiths Daughter & Famely do if you will beleve me I cannot now think of her Name How is Dr Bond & Famely Do you Ever see my obliging Mr York. Did Mrs Leegay go to the West Indieas, is that Dr Shipin that is Dead whose child mad the Speech at yr House, How goes on Goard & his sister & Townly Did they Ever Pay my son the mony they owed Him, or Did you Ever git yr Rent. How Does yr Good Nibour Hadock, Duke of Wharton, Marquis of Rockingham has he got His Government. how do you Like Mr Foxcrofts Lady is Tomey marryed. Is Cousen All Turned Marchant & stay at home constantly.
She asked after everyone from family (
Richard Bache) to members of the
American Philosophical Society and the
Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly and their wives to her son Benjamin’s employers (the Philadelphia printer
William Goddard and his sister), to Deborah’s cousin Captain Isaac All. She knew she had run on too long: “I beleve by this time you are hartyly tiered with this trumpery,” she sighed, adding, “In compashon to you I conclud.”
She wished her granddaughter Jenny Flagg could come to live with her, but the girl’s father refused; he wanted Jenny’s help minding his children
by his second wife. Jane’s
boarders came and went. “I wish I had such a constant Border to Pay me 3 Dolars a week the year Round,” she thought. “I could then do Prity well.”
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She especially missed the children she had grown fond of in Philadelphia. “Your King Bird I Long to see,” she wrote Deborah. “I have watched Every child to find some Resemblanc but have seen but won & that was only in Good Natuer & Sweet Smell.”
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No child smelled so sweet.
In London, Franklin’s thoughts, too, turned to his family, if differently. Jane thought about her descendants; her brother thought about his ancestors. In 1771, thirteen days before he began writing his autobiography, he sent his sister a genealogical chart. It begins with “Thomas Franklin of
Ecton in N. hamptonshire born 1598,” and it ends with the children of
Grace Harris Williams, Benjamin Mecom, and
Sally Franklin Bache. (He left his
illegitimate son, William, and William’s illegitimate son, Temple, out of the chart.) Then Franklin asked his sister for a favor: “Having mentioned so many Dyers in our Family”—he had written to her about how their father learned dyeing from his older brothers—“I will now it’s in my Mind request of you a full & particular Receipt for Dying Worsted of that beautiful Red, which you learnt of our Mother. And also a Receipt for making Crown Soap. Let it be very exact in the smallest Particulars.”
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She wrote down the recipes. How to dye wool red. How to make soap. She sent them across the ocean. Her
recipe for soap runs on for pages.
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It’s even more detailed than her brother’s genealogical chart. She could hardly have been more particular. “There is a good deal of Phylosephy in the working of crown soap,” she explained.
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“I thank you for the Receipts; they are as full and particular as one could wish,” he wrote back, adding that he was glad “that those useful Arts that have so long been in our Family, are now put down in Writing.”
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He was thinking of putting another useful art down in writing: the art of his life. “I should have no Objection to a Repetition of the same Life from its Beginning, only asking the Advantage Authors have in a second Edition to correct some Faults of the first,” he remarked, using his favorite metaphor: his life was a
book, and he was its author. But what if it could be more than a metaphor? What if he could make his life into a book? He could hardly live his life over again but, “since such a Repetition is not to be expected, the Thing most like living one’s Life over again, seems to be a
Recollection
of that Life.” A memory could be made “durable,” so long
as he busied himself “putting it down in Writing.”
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A book could be life, everlasting.
Two weeks after Franklin sent Jane their family’s
genealogy and asked her to send him the family recipes, he began writing the story of his life. It began with his origins. He meant for the story of his life to be copied.
Having emerg’d from the
Poverty and
Obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a State of Affluence and some Degree of Reputation in the World, and having gone so far thro’ Life with a considerable Share of Felicity, the conducing Means I made use of, which, with the Blessing of God, so well succeeded, my Posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own Situations, and therefore fit to be imitated.
It was another recipe: rags to riches.
CHAPTER XXV
On SmugglingP
atience
Wright, an artist who worked
wax beneath her skirts, warming it between her thighs, met Jane in
Boston in 1771. Wright, a widow and a mother of three, was an artist on her way to London. She wished for an introduction to Franklin.
For years, Wright had amused her children by molding people out of bread dough. When her husband died, she, like Jane, went into business. She started making people out of wax, pulling life-size molded wax figures out from between her legs. It was astonishing, unrivaled, and scandalous.
Abigail Adams called Wright “the queen of sluts.”
1
In New York in June 1771, as the
newspapers reported it, “a Fire was discovered in the House of Mrs. Wright, the ingenious Artist in Wax-Work, and Proprietor of the Figures so nearly resembling the Life.” Nearly everything was destroyed.
2
Wright then headed to Boston, with her children and what was left of her gallery of figures. By September, she was exhibiting her work.
3
Maybe it was the idea of a female artist that fascinated Jane. Or the way Wright gave birth to her art. Or maybe it was the wax itself, so much like soap. Jane gave the artist a letter of introduction to her brother (something people often asked her to do, but which she rarely did).
4
When Wright arrived in London, she carried in her bag a letter from Jane to Franklin. “I have this Day receiv’d your kind Letter by Mrs. Wright,” Franklin wrote Jane in March. “She has shown me some of her Work which appears extraordinary. I shall recommend her among my Friends if she chuses to work here.”
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Franklin became Wright’s most important patron.
In London, Wright became an ardent advocate of the patriot cause. Franklin had promised Jane he would “do her all the Service in my Power,”
and he did.
6
By November, Jane could read in the Boston papers that “the ingenious Mrs. Wright” was taking likenesses of the king and queen and had already completed “the most striking likeness of the celebrated Dr. Franklin.”
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(It does not survive. Only a single piece of Patience Wright’s work remains; the rest is lost. Most of it caught fire and melted.)
Jane and her brother shared other friends, too. “There seems now to be a Pause in
Politics,” Jane’s minister, Samuel Cooper, wrote to Franklin in London in 1771.
8
(Cooper used the political pause to plan his church’s move.)
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Cooper and Franklin had been corresponding at least since the middle of the 1760s, when Cooper became a leader of the resistance movement; Franklin sent Cooper transcripts of speeches made in Parliament, and Cooper sent Franklin news of the doings of the
Massachusetts General Assembly. “Your candid, clear, and well-written Letters, be assured, are of great Use,” Franklin wrote to him.
10
“My Thanks are due to you for writing me with so much Freedom,” Cooper returned, “and I endeavor to make the best Use of what you communicate to me.”
11
That May, Franklin
sent to Jonathan Williams Jr., who had returned to Boston, a set of books written by
Joseph Priestley; Williams sold them and gave the money to Jane.
12
Blind Josiah Williams returned from London unwell.
13
He died in August 1772. He was twenty-four. His father paid for a lavish funeral, giving away gold
mourning rings. Jane consoled with Grace. And Grace consoled with Jane, whose daughter Jenny was threatening to marry a ship’s captain named
Peter Collas, a man whose merit Jane doubted.
14
Jane expected her brother to visit Boston in 1773. He had run away from home in 1723. He had visited in 1733, in 1743, in 1753, and in 1763. “Aunt Mecom and all Friends are well,” Jonathan Williams Jr. wrote to Franklin at the end of 1773, but “the Year 73 is now so near at hand without the prospect of seeing You, that we begin to fear you will break through your Intention of visiting every ten Years.”
15
Franklin could not come. Instead, he was busy trying to smuggle out of London letters written by
Thomas Hutchinson.
Francis Bernard, the royally appointed, feckless, and much despised governor of Massachusetts, had left the colonies in 1769. There had been some small speculation that Franklin might replace Bernard. Jonathan Williams Sr. wrote his uncle, “We Want a Governor and all most every Body Wishes Doctor Franklin
might Come.”
16
But with Bernard gone, it was Hutchinson who was left to handle the deepening crisis. The
Massachusetts General Assembly, protesting the military occupation, had refused to meet at the
Town House in Boston and instead met in Cambridge, at Harvard. In November 1772, Hutchinson prorogued the assembly. In defiance, the Boston
Town Meeting appointed an entirely extralegal twenty-one-member Committee of Correspondence—replacing legislators with letter writers.