ISSUE: Summer 1975
EIGHTEEN volumes have now been issued in the Yale University-American Philosophical Society sponsored series, “The Papers of Benjamin Franklin.” Reviewers have been lavish in their words of praise for the meticulous scholarship that has gone into this literary reconstruction of one of the most enduringly interesting Americans who ever lived. It has been a prodigious, monumental, thorough, and scholarly effort to put everything that can be found written by and to Franklin before us in beautifully prepared chronologically arranged editions—-a task that has gone on for over fifteen years.
In these most recently published volumes, 16 to 18, we are taken up to 1771 (there are still twenty years of his life to go). This is a fairly quiet section between the turmoil of Pennsylvania politics and the final crisis in imperial relations. He has been in England since 1765 representing the Pennsylvania legislature but increasingly his attention and work are engaged in explaining American resistance to ministerial policies. Although the crisis appears to come to a temporary resolution with the repeal of most of the Townshend Acts, it is clear to Franklin that events on both sides of the Atlantic have narrowed the definition of the relationship of the colonies to England. Room for compromise has lessened. Franklin is still hopeful that an enlightened, flexible policy will prevail in England, but his concern for the future and his own view of the issues show a marked change in these years. The ground is being prepared for the final confrontation and his personal disillusionment that will come in a few years. Between 1769 and 1771, however, he still has time for travels to France, Ireland, and Scotland, for meeting new people and new ideas, and for the expression of that unique wide-ranging curiosity about the world around him.
All of this is faithfully reflected in “The Papers”; so also is the busyness of daily living and the problems of maintaining his close relationships with people and events in America. We find out that his wife is spending too much unwisely. There are letters of introduction from colonials who seek Franklin’s help in England and letters about obscure financial disputes or partnerships in difficulties. It forms a thick, complex texture, moving from matters of great importance to trivia and back again, all part of a life that could encompass such a variety of activities and interests and, incredibly, have time to write most of it down!
That is, I think, the difficulty with these volumes. They do reveal the whole of Franklin’s correspondence; they do reconstruct as much as possible the parts of this monumental man. But like some kinds of Hindu architecture, there is just too much, and the mind is overwhelmed by the profusion of detail. The pity is that these volumes will probably be read by very few. Except for the most dedicated Franklinist, it is difficult to imagine many who will take up one of these books for just a year’s slice of Franklin. Volumes 16 through 18, for instance, present over 1000 pages for the period from January, 1769, to December 31, 1771. The best things are, of course, included—the essays and the illuminating letters, such as the one to Mrs. Shipley about Franklin’s trip with her daughter when the old man and the child discuss prospective husbands for the Shipley sisters—but there is such a thicket of the ordinary and humdrum to hack through. To be sure, this shows the context and the fact that Franklin did not simply spend his time writing essays about imperial affairs and scientific experiments. Nonetheless, in this monumental reconstruction, displaying the vast expenditure of financial and scholarly resources that have gone into this project, we have been given source books whose fate unfortunately will probably be to gather dust on library shelves. The Franklin that interests us will be portrayed by scholars who will indeed use these “Papers.” That is a limited use, but it is perhaps sufficient if a few good books result.
Catherine Drinker Bowen was one author who did draw on “The Papers” and presented us with a very fine book before she died of cancer. She had always wanted to write about Franklin, whose “character and history have long been woven through my books and therefore through my life.” The result, entitled “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” assumes that the reader has a general familiarity with Franklin’s life. Mrs. Bowen sets out to examine five major episodes in his career so that “the scenes are units in themselves . . . a reader may open at any chapter or “scene”.” The first section describes the making of the young Franklin in Boston and his precocious beginnings as a writer of the “Silence Dogood” letters printed in his brother’s newspaper. The following scenes explore “Franklin and Electricity” and “The Albany Congress of 1754 and Franklin’s Plan of Union.” The last three sections focus on his political career: “Franklin is Fifty,” “Franklin in London,” and “The Making of a Revolutionary.” The book ends with his humiliation before the Privy Council in 1774.
Mrs. Bowen’s choice of episodes and her judgments are highly personal. She regarded Franklin as “the most consistently entertaining biographical subject. . .” who “lacked that tragic sense of life that makes heroes, but I love him for it; he simply accepted.” He was a man who “wrested a happy life from circumstances that would have dulled or embittered a lesser man.”
What makes this book stand out from the many about Franklin is its very personal and intimate touch. It is unabashedly a loving portrait. There is no pretense of aloof, dry objectivity. Mrs. Bowen is discussing a man who, across the centuries, had become a lively and stimulating friend. She wanted to share with her readers what it was in the man that made him so fascinating—”I cannot bear to have done with this admirable, beguiling character.” Her last judgment of Franklin was that he “had that quality that I call ‘grace’.” This could also stand as a fair judgment of Catherine Drinker Bowen’s book about her friend Franklin.
