Book of Ages (35 page)
Authors: Jill Lepore
Free and independent in a way she had never been before, she wrote, brazenly, that she wished she had more intelligent people to talk to. “I Injoy all the Agreable conversation I can come at Properly, but I find Litle, very Litle, Equal to that I have a Right to by Nature but am deprived of by Provedence.”
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It was a shocking thing to say, and to believe: that she had a right to intelligent conversation—a natural right—but had been deprived of it, by
Providence.
· · ·
In Paris, Franklin returned to the story of his life, writing Part II, twelve pages. “Histories of Lives are seldom entertaining, unless they contain something either admirable or exemplar,” he had written, decades before, as Silence Dogood.
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He wasn’t sure he ought to publish his story, or even finish it.
Benjamin Vaughan, who had edited Franklin’s
Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Pieces
(the collection Jane hadn’t been able to get her hands on), urged him to keep at it. “Your history is so remarkable, that if you do not give it, somebody else will,” Vaughan wrote.”
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Jane kept reading, studying lives, studying
philosophy, studying politics. She would soon have a syllabus, a list of books to read, containing the greatest ideas of the age. In 1778, a town in Massachusetts had been named after her brother. There was some question of whether Benjamin Franklin would give to the town, as a
gift, a bell for the church tower. “They are poore, and in my Opinion, dont nead a
bell
any more then a toad Neads a Tail,” Jonathan Williams Sr. wrote Franklin. Franklin decided to give not a bell for a church but books for a library.
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“I observe in won of your Leters to cousen Williams your Intention to Present to Franklin Town a number of Books as a Foundation for a Parish Library hopeing the Franklins will Prefer Sense to Sound,” Jane wrote her brother, much amused. She didn’t quite like the idea—she never had—that her brother had more use for a library than for a church. So she pestered him: “I cant doubt but such a Library will consist of some Authers on Divine Subjects I therefor hope you will not think it too Presuming in me to Propose won, Viz Discourses on Personal Religion in two Volumes by Samuel Stnnett D D Printed
in London by R Hett in 1769 I borrowed them and Read them with a grat deal of Pleasure and I think you yourself would if you could find time tho there may be many things in them not altogether Agreable to your Sentiments, which I sopose may be the case with Every Volume you Read on any Subject”—and which was the case with nearly every volume she read on any subject, too.
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Here was she, full of opinions, telling
him
what to read. He took her advice. He wrote a letter to his friend the Welsh clergyman
Richard Price asking for his help in drawing up a list of books for the Franklin library. “Besides your own Works,” Franklin wrote Price, “I would only mention,
on the Recommendation of my Sister, Stennet’s Discourses on personal
Religion, which may be one Book of the Number, if you know it and approve of it.”
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Price had been a friend of Franklin’s since the two men first met, in 1757. He maintained a considerable correspondence in Boston.
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He was an ardent supporter of American independence, having published several influential tracts in favor of the American cause during the 1770s, along with a pamphlet called
Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution,
in 1784. He approved of Stennett, an English Baptist and hymn writer who was just the sort of theologian Jane admired. In 1785, Price prepared a list of books for the town of Franklin; early the next year, Jonathan Williams Jr. shipped them to Massachusetts.
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Jane asked Franklin for a copy of the list.
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“My Reason for this Request is I have a grat deal of time on my hands,” she explained. “I Love Reading, it is a Present Amusement tho my memory is so bad that I cannot Retain it as many others do; now I am sure that will be a collection worth Reading & I dont doubt I can Borrow of won & a nother of my Acquaintance from time to time such as I have a mind to Read.”
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She got the catalog.
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If she read from that list of 116 volumes, she would have read Locke, Sydney,
Montesquieu,
Blackstone, Newton, Priestley, and Price.
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She would have pored over everything she could get her hands on. She found company, and pleasure, in pages, more pleasure than she had ever known. She not only had more time to read, and a mind for it, but more time to write, and a mind for that, too. Between 1785, when she was well settled in her own house, and 1790, when her brother died, she wrote more letters than survive for all of the years of all the rest of her life put together.
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She had never been happier. “As to my self I Live very much to my Likeing, I never had a Tast for High Life, for Large companys, & Entertainments,” she wrote her brother, adding, philosophically, “I am of Popes mind that Health, Peace, and Competance, come as near to Happynes as is Atainable in this Life, and I am in a good measure In possession of all three at Present, if they are at Times a Litle Infringd ocationaly or by Accedent, I Vew it as the common Lot of all and am not much Disturbed.”
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Health, peace, and competence. Quiet, at last.
“It is trew I have some Trobles,” she admitted, but “when I Look Round
me on all my Acquaintance I do not see won I have Reason to think Happier than I am.”
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She was happy, and she was proud. “I have this Spring been new planking the yard made New gate, & new Cedar Dores,” she one day boasted, “& am Painting the Front of the House to make it look Decent that I may not be Ashamed when any Boddy Inquiers for Dr Franklins Sister in the Neibourhood.”
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CHAPTER XXXIII
Thirteen StarsI
n July 1785, Benjamin Franklin sailed for home. He arrived in Philadelphia in September. He was seventy-nine years old. His sister was seventy-three.
“I Perceive by the News papers you are not to be suffered to Rest as long as you are Alive,” she wrote him, having heard that he had accepted the post of president of Pennsylvania (the equivalent, under the state’s new constitution, of a governorship). She was furious. “I was in hopes you would have Resolutely Rersisted all Solicitations to Burdern yr Self any more with the concerns of the Publick, & Flattered my self if I were with you I should Injoy a litle familiar Domestic Chit Chat like comon folks, but now I Imagine all Such Attempts would be Intrusion.”
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They would never have that domestic chitchat, like common folks, except in letters, which now traveled between them in a matter of days, and were chatty in a way they had never been before, Jane less diffident, Franklin less busy.
“I can not find in my Hart to be Pleasd at your Accepting the Goverment of the State and Therefore have not congratulated you on it,” Jane wrote, miffed. “I fear it will Fatigue you two much.”
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“I do not wonder at your blaming me for accepting the Government,” he wrote back. And then he teased her. “We have all of us Wisdom enough to judge what others ought to do, or not to do in the Management of their Affairs; and ’tis possible I might blame you as much if you were to accept the Offer of a young Husband. My Example may teach you not to be too confident in your own Prudence; as it teaches me not to be surpris’d at such an Event should it really happen.”
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She let that pass.
She told him all about her house. He told her all about his. He was renovating and expanding, adding a new library, with shelves for four thousand books.
“The Library is to be even with the Floor of my old Chamber,” he wrote her. “I hardly know how to justify building a Library at an Age that will so soon oblige me to quit it.”
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“If we may Judge of the fittnes of things,” she allowed, “we may Surely Expect won who has Imployd His whol Life to Defuse Happines to all the world has a Right to live in a comodious House.”
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He kept casting his mind back to home. “When you have a little Leisure write me an Account of all the Relations we have left in New England,” he asked her.
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“I have begun the Acount of our Relations and shall send it in my Next,” she promised.
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After she sent it, he received an inquiry. “I have lately receiv’d a Letter from a Person who subscribes himself Stickney, says he is a Grandson of my Sister Davenport, and has a son named Benj Franklin,” he told her. “You have not mentioned this Family in the List you sent me. Do you know any thing of them?”
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Jane loved this sort of question, reporting, in her gabby way, in the middle of a snowy winter:
Our Sister Davenport had a Daughter Dorcas who married to a Mr Stickney & lived at Newbury he was a chare maker by traid but never loved work, but that is not the thing, thay had been so long Dead & I had no Remembrance of there Leaveing any Children & had never seen any of them that I sopose I did not think of the Famely when I wrot the List, when I recd your Leter our Streets were unpasable by any means for old folks but a few Days after I Sent to Mrs Williams to Inquier what She knew about them, & had for Ansure all she knew of the man who wrot to you, was that he was a good for nothing Impudent Lazey Felow Just like his Father, I thought however as he had an Aunt in the Town I would know somthing farther before I ansured your Leter.
That is to say: their niece Dorcas Davenport had married a layabout named Stickney. Jane couldn’t recall whether they had any children, but she had decided to find out. She asked Grace Harris Williams, who told
her that Dorcas had had a son. This was the man—Anthony Somersby Stickney—who had written to Franklin. Grace thought him “a good for nothing Impudent Lazey Felow Just like his Father.” This only made Jane more curious, so she went to visit the young man’s aunt. (“I therefore Got a Carrage & went to her & Inquierd about the Famely.”) Reporting all this to her brother, she included, too, a rather breathless history of the Stickney family, more elaborate than usual, since she had been gently chided by her brother for having left this branch of the Franklin family off the list of all their relatives that she had just sent him. So she went on, about the aunt:
She Tould me that when her Sister was married her Husbands mother & Grandfather were Liveing on a Litle Estate they had in Newbury where he also carried his Wife after trying to live by Shopkeeping in this Town, but haveing so litle means of soport they became exdding Poor, in which time she says you went to see them & made them a hansom Present (I sopose at the time you Put out yr Shoulder at Portesmouth) His Grandfather Lived to be above 90 year old but He and his Daughter Dieing Left the house to our cousen but they could not feed long upon that, he Therefore took a Prudent Step sould it & bought a good Farm at Derry, & went to Live on it where his wife helpd. to work on it & thay got to Live Extradinery well, but She Mrs Rodgers thinks shortned her Days by too hard Labour, & her husband Died soon After her & left the Farm to this man & a sister who are all the children they left & who live to gather on it & do very well, She says he has a Good charecter as a Sober Honest man but does not Increce his Estate as won tould her he Entertaind too many Strangers in hopes of Entertaing Angels unawares.
That is to say, Anthony Stickney wasn’t a bad man, but he was dreamy, awaiting riches rather than working for them. Finally, Jane reached the end of her history:
She says she saw Him about a year & half a go & he tould her he had such a Son that he Named for you, that he gave him all the Education he was able, but she thinks him very Bold in writing to you She is shure she shuld not have don it, as to the Boy I omited to Inquire Perticularly about him as the carrage waited for me Put it out of my mind.
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