The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (96 page)

Franklin replied that he was far out of practice, not having played the game regularly for many years. But in light of the honor the lady did him in issuing the challenge, he would accept.

Splendid, said the go-between. Dr. Franklin should call on the lady at earliest convenience. No further introduction was required.

Franklin made plans to visit Mrs. Howe (who had married a cousin, also named Howe, thus keeping the name in the family). But feeling rather awkward about presenting himself on her doorstep, he put off the match. Only after the mutual acquaintance reiterated the invitation and escorted Franklin to her door did the contest take place.

It proved a very agreeable affair. They played a few games; from modesty or otherwise, Franklin did not record who won. He enjoyed himself; she, herself. They arranged to meet again.

At the second session they played again, with as much pleasure as before. Then Mrs. Howe directed the conversation to a mathematical problem she had been considering. Franklin, impressed, pursued the matter.

The lady changed the subject once more. “What is to be done with this dispute between Britain and the colonies?” she asked (in Franklin’s reconstruction of the conversation). “I hope we are not to have civil war. They should kiss and be friends.” She said she had long believed the government ought to employ the distinguished doctor to settle the quarrel. “I am sure nobody could do it so well. Don’t you think the thing is practicable?”

“Undoubtedly, madam,” Franklin responded, “if the parties are disposed to reconciliation. For the two countries have really no clashing interest to differ about. It is rather a matter of punctilio, which two or three reasonable people might settle in half an hour. I thank you for the good opinion you are pleased to express of me; but the ministers will never think of employing me in that good work. They choose rather to abuse me.”

Mrs. Howe agreed with this last comment. “They have behaved shamefully to you. And indeed some of them are now ashamed of it themselves.”

At the time, Franklin considered these remarks simply accidental conversation and thought no more of it. On his next visit, however, the relationship acquired a new wrinkle. The day happened to be Christmas; Mrs. Howe happened to be joined by her brother, who was most interested in making Dr. Franklin’s acquaintance. Lord Howe followed his sister in regretting the disgraceful treatment Franklin had suffered at the hands of the government. Yet in light of the alarming situation with regard to America, Howe hoped personal resentments might be put aside in the interest of attempting reconciliation.

Franklin responded that, whatever the injuries he personally had suffered,
those done his country were so much greater as to put the other in shadow. “Besides,” he said, “it is a fixed rule with me not to mix my private affairs with those of the public. I could join with my personal enemy in serving the public, or, when it was for its interest, with the public in serving that enemy.” He would be happy to explore the prospect of reconciliation, but the prospect appeared quite slim. The government seemed as set as ever on the course that had led to all the troubles. Until that changed, there was little to discuss.

Franklin expected this to dampen his lordship’s interest, but it did not. Howe hinted at discontent in the government; some of the ministers were in fact quite favorably disposed to any reasonable settlement that would allow saving the government’s dignity. He requested Franklin to prepare a document delineating terms to which the colonies might be disposed to agree. He added that under other circumstances he would be delighted to call on the doctor at his home in Craven Street or to have the doctor come to his house, but such open meetings might inspire speculation, which could be only detrimental to discussion. They probably ought to continue to meet at Mrs. Howe’s, where the chess matches could provide cover.

Agreeing, Franklin determined to test the waters of conciliation himself. Some months earlier he had spoken with Lord Chatham, who as William Pitt had been more responsible than any other man for creating the current empire. Not surprisingly, the earl was distressed to see his successors bent on frittering it away. The Continental Congress was about to meet; Chatham requested Franklin apprise him as soon as he learned what the Congress accomplished.

The news had arrived just before Franklin’s surprise meeting with Lord Howe. The Americans were as steadfast and united as Franklin had hoped. The Congress condemned the Intolerable Acts and the assorted other encroachments by Parliament on the rights of Americans, reasserted the exclusive authority of the colonial legislatures to make laws for the colonies, and revived nonimportation. At the same time, however, the Congress reiterated American allegiance to the Crown.

Franklin took the news to Chatham the day after Christmas. “He received me with an affectionate kind of respect that from so great a man was extremely engaging. But the opinion he expressed of the Congress was still more so. They had acted, he said, with so much temper, moderation and wisdom that he thought it the most honourable assembly of statesmen since those of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the most virtuous times.” Chatham inquired of Franklin whether the colonies would
support the resolutions of the Congress. Franklin said they would—which answer increased the earl’s respect for America even further. “He expressed a great regard and warm affection for that country, with hearty wishes for their prosperity; and that Government here might soon come to see its mistakes and rectify them.”

Franklin could not help being encouraged. Chatham’s opposition to government policies was no secret, but after a season of merely grumbling in his den, the old lion indicated he might roar once more. And so he did, after making a point of honoring Franklin by escorting him on his arm into the House of Lords. This created a stir, for none had known of the communications between the American and the earl. On that day Chatham moved that General Gage withdraw his troops from Boston as a gesture of goodwill and a first step toward reconciliation. “I was quite charmed with Lord Chatham’s speech in support of his motion,” Franklin recorded. “He impressed me with the highest idea of him as a great and most able statesman.” Others joined Chatham, speaking ably on behalf of reason and moderation.

Unfortunately, however, the lords as a group were unreceptive. “All availed no more than the whistling of the winds,” Franklin observed. The motion was defeated.

Yet Chatham did not give up, nor did Lord Howe. During January and February of 1775 Franklin met regularly with them, and with a number of other peers. He advised them in word and writing what America required to feel secure in its rights and how far America would defend those rights against continued usurpation. His interlocutors had somehow gained the impression he was in a position to bargain for the colonies, that if
he
could be persuaded to make a concession on this point or that, a deal might be struck. Howe in particular hinted that the Crown would be most grateful of any help Franklin could provide, and could be counted on to render material proof of its gratitude.

Diplomatically but firmly Franklin rejected the very idea. “My Lord,” he said, “I shall deem it a great honour to be in any shape joined with your lordship in so good a work. But if you hope service from any influence I may be supposed to have, drop all thoughts of procuring me any previous favour from ministers. My accepting them would destroy the very influence you propose to make use of; they would be considered as so many bribes to betray the interest of my country.”

Gradually Franklin realized that the men he was talking to, for all their distinction, lacked the power to pull the British government back from the brink. A telling moment occurred in a subsequent session of
the House of Lords. Chatham, after extended discussion with Franklin—including one meeting at Franklin’s Craven Street residence, which caught the eye of the neighbors and the attention of political London—presented a comprehensive plan for settling the troubles. Dartmouth, representing the government, treated the proposal courteously, saying it deserved serious consideration. Franklin, again in the gallery, described what happened next.

Lord Sandwich arose, and in a petulant vehement speech opposed its being received at all, and gave his opinion that it ought to be immediately rejected with the contempt it deserved. That he could never believe it the production of any British peer. That it appeared to him rather the work of some American; and turning his face towards me, who was leaning on the bar, said he fancied he had in his eye the person who drew it up, one of the bitterest and most mischievous enemies this country had ever known.

Chatham came to Franklin’s defense, and his own. He said he resented the insinuation that any bill he presented was another man’s work, but if he were prime minister he would deem it no disgrace—indeed quite the opposite—to rely on one so distinguished in the eyes of all Europe as Dr. Franklin.

Chatham’s motion failed miserably, even Dartmouth changing his initial neutrality to opposition. Franklin concluded that no hope remained. A final visit to the House of Lords sealed the verdict. Lord Camden, one of those with whom he had discussed a possible settlement, spoke favorably of the Americans. As with Chatham, he was hooted down. Franklin recorded:

I was much disgusted from the ministerial side by many base reflections on American courage, religion, understanding, &c., in which we were treated with the utmost contempt, as the lowest of mankind, and almost of a different species from the English of Britain; but particularly the American honesty was abused by some of the Lords, who asserted that we were all knaves and wanted only by this dispute to avoid paying our debts; that if we had any sense of equity or justice we should offer payment of the tea &c.

Franklin by this time had already made plans to leave for America. As a parting gesture he gave vent to his anger in a memorial he drafted to
Dartmouth. Far from owing Britain anything for the tea, he declared, Massachusetts was owed by Britain for the damage incurred as a result of the British blockade. “I, the underwritten, do therefore, as their agent, in behalf of my Country and the said town of Boston, protest against the continuance of the said blockade. And I do hereby solemnly demand satisfaction for the accumulated injury done them beyond the value of the India Company’s tea destroyed.”

Aside from the fact that he had no instructions from Massachusetts to make this demand, Franklin realized on second thought that such a piece of impertinence might simply confirm the ministers in their collective misjudgment. He decided to consult his friend (and land-seeking ally) Thomas Walpole. “He looked at it and me several times alternately,” Franklin recorded, “as if he apprehended me a little out of my senses.” Franklin asked Walpole to take the letter to Lord Camden and see what
he
thought. Camden agreed that Franklin must not deliver it. Walpole returned to Franklin’s lodgings to warn him in writing and in person that delivery would be interpreted as a “national affront” that might produce “dangerous consequences to your person.” Franklin reluctantly acceded, and dropped the matter.

22
Rebel
1775–76

When Franklin left London at the vernal equinox of 1775 he believed he would never return. For most of eighteen years London had been his home; he knew London now better than he knew Philadelphia. But the London he left by coach to catch the Pennsylvania packet at Portsmouth was not the London he had known just a few years earlier. Corruption had always troubled its politics, yet corruption now overwhelmed all else. The placemen, the toadies, the cynics had triumphed; honest seekers after the welfare of the empire as a whole had no place. For eighteen years he had resisted returning to America, for the last eleven successfully; he resisted no more.

What he was returning to he could only guess. When he had left America in 1757 he was fifty-one, in the prime of his adult life. Now he was sixty-nine, an old man by anyone’s reckoning. Few of his contemporaries survived; for a decade or more his associates had been primarily of a younger generation.

The latest, and most poignant, reminder of mortality was the death of Deborah. After her stroke six years earlier she had never been the same. He could read in her letters that she was slipping from this earthly sphere. If it pained him he did not say—neither in letters nor in comments recorded by friends. Nor did he mention feeling guilty at having essentially abandoned her in her old age. “Her death was no more than might reasonably be expected after the paralytic stroke she received some time ago, which greatly affected her memory and understanding,” William wrote on Christmas Eve 1774, conveying the sad news. “She told me, when I took leave of her on my removal to Amboy [several months earlier] that she never expected to see you unless you returned this winter, for she was sure she should not live till next summer.” When Franklin read this, did it hurt more to know that Debbie felt this way, or that she had not told him? “I heartily wish you had happened to have come over in the fall, as I think her disappointment in that respect preyed a good deal on her spirits,” William concluded. Did Franklin need his son—who was not even
her
son—to tell him this?