The writer might as well have added "as is Arthur Lee." In another letter, Vergennes stated that the four millions more that France had decided to grant Dr. Franklin would convince Congress that they had "no occasion to employ the false policy of Mr. Izard and Mr. Lee to procure succors."[31]
For very different reasons, even Jay, with his admirable character, did not achieve any success in dealing with the French people beyond the kind of success which the French themselves d.a.m.n with the phrase _succes d"estime_.
The complaint that M. Grand made of him, when he was in Spain, "that he always appeared very much b.u.t.toned up," was hardly less applicable to him when he was transferred to Paris as one of our Peace Commissioners. "Mr.
Jay," diarizes Adams, "likes Frenchmen as little as Mr. Lee and Mr. Izard did. He says they are not a moral people; they know not what it is; he don"t like any Frenchman; the Marquis de Lafayette is clever, but he is a Frenchman."
John Laurens, too, when he came over to Paris to solicit money for the American army, _beau sabreur_ as he was, handled the French as awkwardly as the rest. "He was indefatigable, while he staid," Franklin wrote to William Carmichael, "and took true Pains, but he _brusqu"d_ the Ministers too much, and I found after he was gone that he had thereby given more Offence than I could have imagin"d." The truth is that, until the watchful detachment of Adams and Jay from their foreign environment became of some service to the United States in helping to a.s.sure to them the full fruits of their victory in the final shuffle of diplomacy over the Treaty of Peace, Franklin after the return of Silas Deane to America was the only one of our diplomatic representatives who can be said to have earned his salt in France.[32] The rest, so far from promoting the objects of the French mission, did much to jeopard its success. The United States could well have afforded to keep them all at home and to pay them double the amount of the salaries which were wasted upon them abroad. They either could not rise above the limitations and prejudices of foreigners in dealing with a people peculiarly tenacious of their own national views and characteristics, or were too lacking in diplomatic instinct and _savoir faire_ to hold their own grating idiosyncracies of temper and disposition in check, when it was of the highest importance to their country that they should do so; or they were so restive under the pre-eminence of Franklin as to be unable to control the envy and ill-feeling, which hara.s.sed his peace, and tended to discredit the cause, in which they were engaged. Congress did not do many wise things in regard to our interests in France during the Revolution, but undoubtedly it did one, when it finally brought the discord of its envoys in that country to an end by declining to accept the resignation of Franklin and appointing him the sole Amba.s.sador of the United States at Paris.[33] Under no circ.u.mstances, does his success in obtaining succor for America from France stand out so clearly as when contrasted with the futile missions of Arthur Lee, William Lee, Ralph Izard, Francis Dana and John Jay to other courts than that of France. So far from obtaining any material aid for the United States from the countries, to which they were accredited, and should never have been sent,[34] they had to fall back upon Franklin himself for their own subsistence; though it is only fair to them to say that some of them were allowed by these countries too little freedom of approach to make an impression of any kind upon them, good or otherwise.
For the bad feeling entertained by Adams, Lee and Izard towards Franklin there is no valid reason for holding Franklin responsible. It is plain that he did not lack the inclination to be on friendly terms with Adams; and there is no evidence that he in any way provoked the malice which he suffered at the hands of Arthur Lee, or the pa.s.sionate animosity which he excited in Ralph Izard. As late as 1780, after the return of Adams to Europe as a peace commissioner, Franklin wrote to William Carmichael that Adams and himself lived on good terms with each other, though the former, he added, had never communicated anything of his business to him, and he had made no inquiries of him. If Franklin did not live on good terms with Arthur Lee, it was because no one, unless it were Adams, or Ralph Izard, when drawn to Lee by common jealousy of Franklin, could live on good terms with a man whose character was so hopelessly soured and perverted by suspicion and spleen. It was doubtless with entire truth that Franklin in a letter to William Carmichael, in which he termed Lee the most malicious enemy that he ever had, declared that there was not the smallest cause for his enmity. It had been inspired in England, as it had been revived in France, simply by the brooding desire of Lee to displace Franklin. In 1771, he made it plain in a letter from England to Samuel Adams that Franklin, in his opinion, was not too good to be the instrument of Lord Hillsborough"s treachery in pretending that all designs against the charter of Ma.s.sachusetts had been laid aside.
The possession of a profitable office at will, the having a son in a high post at pleasure, the grand purpose of his residence here being to effect a change in the government of Pennsylvania, for which administration must be cultivated and courted [Lee wrote], are circ.u.mstances which, joined with the temporizing conduct he has always held in American affairs, preclude every rational hope that, in an open contest between an oppressive administration and a free people, Dr. Franklin can be a faithful advocate for the latter.
In another letter he intimated a suspicion that Dr. Franklin had been "bribed to betray his trust." The motive for such communications is made clear enough by still another letter that he sent over to Boston stating that, while Dr. Franklin frequently a.s.sured him that he would sail for Philadelphia in a few weeks, he believed he would not quit them till he was gathered to his fathers.[35] The insidious calumnies that Lee sowed in Ma.s.sachusetts, when he was coveting Franklin"s agency for that colony, were only too effective for a time in creating even in the minds of such men as Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Josiah Quincy an impression unfavorable to Franklin"s fidelity to the American cause. How little based on any real misgivings as to the character of the man, whose place he craved, were the innuendoes and accusations of Lee, may be inferred from his statement at the time of the Privy Council outrage that Franklin bore the a.s.saults of Wedderburn "with a firmness and equanimity which conscious integrity can inspire." In a letter to Lord Shelburne in 1776, he even spoke of Franklin as "our _Pater Patriae_."
In France, the same sense of having a young man"s revenue withered out by tedious expectation led to similar misrepresentations and intrigue. This time, the object was to bring about the transfer of Franklin from France, where the jealousy of Lee was incessantly inflamed by his great reputation and influence, to some other post, and the appointment of Lee himself as his successor. If the change had not been such as to foreshadow utter ruin to American interests in France, the letters that Arthur Lee wrote to his brother Richard Henry Lee in the prosecution of these aims would be little less than ludicrous. "My idea of adapting characters and places is this,"
he said in one letter, "Dr. F. to Vienna, as the first, most respectable, and quiet; Mr. Deane to Holland.... France remains the centre of political activity, and here, therefore, I should choose to be employed." There was but one way, he said in another letter to his brother, of bringing to an end the neglect, dissipation, and private schemes, which he saw in every department of the American Mission at Paris, and that was the plan he had before suggested of appointing the Dr. _honoris causa_ to Vienna, Mr. Deane to Holland, and Mr. Jennings to Madrid, and of leaving him (Lee) at Paris.
To Samuel Adams he wrote that he had been at the several courts of Spain, Vienna and Berlin, and found that of France to be the great wheel that moved them all. He would, therefore, be much obliged to Adams for remembering that he should prefer being at the court of France.
Lee was a man of considerable ability, though his incurable defects of disposition and temper almost wholly deprived him of the profitable use of it, and he was from first to last, when in Europe, loyal to the American cause. But, if there ever was a person born under the malignant sign, Scorpio, it was he. He was
"More peevish, cross and splenetic Than dog distract or monkey sick."
In the course of his suspicious, jealous and quarrelsome life he appears to have inflicted a venomous sting upon almost every human being that ever crossed the path of his inordinate and intriguing ambition. In the monopoly of intelligence and public virtue that he arrogated to himself he was not unlike the French woman who was credited by Franklin with the a.s.sertion that she met with n.o.body but herself that was always in the right. With a few exceptions, no prominent American in France, when he was in that country, escaped his insidious defamation. Silas Deane was the accomplice of Beaumarchais in his effort to make the United States pay for free gifts of the French King. Franklin was a cunning rogue ever on the watch to line the pockets of his grandnephew, Jonathan Williams; indeed Lee did not scruple to term him "the father of corruption"; every day gave him fresh reasons for suspecting William Carmichael; John Paul Jones was merely the captain of "a cruising job of Chaumont and Dr. Franklin." And so on with the other contemporaries, whose character he did his best to tarnish with the breath of calumny, ever actuated as he was by the sinister, backward-spelling disposition which
"Never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness and merit purchaseth."
What both Lee and Adams could not forgive in Franklin was the fact that, though there were three American envoys at Paris, the French Ministry and People would have it that there was only one, "_le digne Franklin_,"[36]
"_le plus grand philosophe du siecle_," "_l"honneur de l"Amerique, et de l"humanite_." The wounded sense of self-importance, awakened by this fact, a.s.sumed in Adams, except in his more extravagant moments, no worse form than that of quickened self-a.s.sertion, or the charge that Franklin was grown too inert, from years and physical infirmities, to conduct the routine business of the mission with the proper degree of order and system, or was too susceptible to social and academic flattery to keep a vigilant eye upon the more selfish side of French policy. But in the case of Lee, lacerated vanity not only led him along finally to the conclusion that Deane and Franklin were both rascals, but early convinced him that all their transactions, even the simplest, where he was concerned, were shaped by a desire to slight or affront him, or to deprive him of his just privileges and standing as one of the Commissioners. He had hardly been in France a year before his perverse pen was lecturing and scolding Franklin as if he were one of the most arbitrary and inconsiderate of men instead of one of the most reasonable and considerate. At first, Franklin did not reply to such letters, but his failure to reply simply supplied Lee with another excuse for scolding. At last, Lee, after taxing him with tardiness in settling the accounts of the Commissioners, and with keeping him in the dark about the mission on which M. Gerard had been sent to America, expressed the hope that he would not treat this letter from him as he had many others with the indignity of not answering it.
It is true [said Franklin], that I have omitted answering some of your Letters, particularly your angry ones, in which you, with very magisterial Airs, school"d and doc.u.mented me, as if I had been one of your Domestics. I saw in the strongest Light the Importance of our living in decent Civility towards each other, while our great Affairs were depending here. I saw your jealous, suspicious, malignant and quarrelsome Temper, which was daily manifesting itself against Mr. Deane, and almost every other Person you had any Concern with: I therefore pa.s.s"d your Affronts in Silence; did not answer but burnt your angry Letters, and received you when I next saw you with the same Civility as if you had never wrote them.
These words are taken from a letter in which Franklin replied in detail to all the grievances vented in Lee"s letter. On the day before, he had written a curter reply which gives us a good idea of what his anger was at flood-tide.
It is true [this reply began], I have omitted answering some of your Letters. I do not like to answer angry Letters. I hate Disputes. I am old, can not have long to live, have much to do and no time for Altercation.
If I have often receiv"d and borne your Magisterial Snubbings and Rebukes without Reply, ascribe it to the right Causes, my Concern for the Honour & Success of our Mission, which would be hurt by our Quarrelling, my Love of Peace, my Respect for your good Qualities, and my Pity of your Sick Mind, which is forever tormenting itself, with its Jealousies, Suspicions & Fancies that others mean you ill, wrong you, or fail in Respect for you. If you do not cure yourself of this Temper it will end in Insanity, of which it is the Symptomatick Forerunner, as I have seen in several Instances. G.o.d preserve you from so terrible an Evil: and for his sake pray suffer me to live in quiet.
The pet.i.tion was not heeded. Cut off by his impracticable temper and the dis-esteem of the French Ministry from any partic.i.p.ation in the more important transactions of the Mission, the industrious malice of Lee found employment in accusations of peculation against the other agents of the United States in France and in petty refinements over the proper methods of keeping the accounts and papers of the Commissioners. Everything that he touched threw out thorns and exuded acrid juices. Franklin might well have said of him what he said of his brother, William Lee, that he was not only a disputatious but a very artful man. He pursued Deane with such plausible misrepresentations, when the latter sought justice at the hands of Congress, that the unhappy man was finally hurried, to use Franklin"s phrase, into joining his friend, Arnold. How he harried Jonathan Williams, we have already seen. So well understood was his litigious, malevolent temper that, when the State of Virginia desired to purchase arms and military stores in France, several merchants refused to have any dealings with him, and one firm dealt with him only to be involved in the usual web of fine-spun suspicion and controversy.
I hope, however [wrote Franklin to Patrick Henry, at the time Governor of Virginia, who had solicited Franklin"s a.s.sistance in the matter], that you will at length be provided with what you want, which I think you might have been long since, if the Affair had not been in Hands, which Men of Honour and Candour here are generally averse to dealing with, as not caring to hazard Quarrels and Abuses in the settlement of their Accounts.
He dared not meddle, he said, with the dispute in which Lee was engaged, "being charg"d by the Congress to endeavour at maintaining a good Understanding with their other Servants," which was, "indeed, a hard task with some of them," he declared.
As his acquaintance with Lee and his brother, William Lee, extended, Franklin became more and more wary in dealing with them. This was ill.u.s.trated in his att.i.tude towards the papers of Thomas Morris, the brother of Robert Morris, and the Commercial Agent of the United States at Nantes. When this gentleman, who, according to one of his contemporaries, "turned out the greatest drunkard the world ever produced," had duly paid the forfeit of his bibulous life, William Lee, with the aid of an order from the French Ministry, secured possession of all his papers, public and private, and, when on the eve of setting out for Germany, placed the trunk containing them sealed in the custody of Franklin. The key, Franklin told him, he would rather have in the keeping of Arthur Lee. A correspondence followed between Franklin and John Ross, who had obtained an order from Congress for the delivery of the trunk to him. If it had been Pandora"s box, Franklin could not have undertaken the delivery of the papers in a more gingerly manner.
I am glad [he wrote to Ross], an Order is come for delivering them to you. But as the Dispute about them may hereafter be continued, and Papers suspected to be embezzled by somebody; and as I have sign"d a terrible long Receipt for the Trunk, of which I have no copy, and only remember that it appear"d to be constructed with all the Circ.u.mspection of the Writers Motto, _Non incautus futuri_ and that it fill"d a Half Sheet so full there was scarce Room for the Names of the four Evidences he requir"d to witness it; I beg you will not expect me to send it to you at Nantes but appoint who you please to receive it for you here. For I think I must deliver it before Witnesses, who may certify the State of the Seals; nothing being more likely than that Seals on a Trunk may rub off in the Carriage on so long a Journey; and then I should be expos"d to the Artful Suggestions of some who do not love me, & whom I conceive to be of very malignant Dispositions.
Afterwards, when Arthur Lee informed Franklin that, unless he was furnished with money by him, he would have to give up the thought of proceeding to Spain, Franklin replied dryly: "As I can not furnish the Expence, and there is not, in my Opinion, any Likelihood at Present of your being received at that Court, I think your Resolution of returning forthwith to America is both wise and honest." And, even when he supposed that he was finally rid of the gad-fly, which had annoyed him so long, and that Lee was off for America, with his poisoned ink-well and busy pen, Franklin took pains that he should not have everything his own way, though a thousand leagues distant. "There are some Americans returning hence," he wrote to Samuel Cooper, "with whom our people should be upon their guard, as carrying with them a spirit of enmity to this country. Not being liked here themselves, they dislike the people; for the same reason, indeed, they ought to dislike all that know them."
Three days later, he wrote to Joseph Reed, of Pennsylvania, a letter in which, after denying a false statement made about the writer by Lee, he said, "He proposes, I understand, to settle in your Government. I caution you to beware of him; for, in sowing Suspicions and Jealousies, in creating Misunderstandings and Quarrels among friends, in Malice, Subtilty, and indefatigable industry, he has I think no equal." A few days later, he wrote to William Carmichael, "Messrs. Lee and Izard are gone to L"Orient, in order to embark in the _Alliance_ together, but they did not travel together from hence. No soul regrets their departure. They separately came to take leave of me, very respectfully offering their services to carry any dispatches, etc."
But gone the gad-fly was not yet. After Lee reached L"Orient, the officers and men of the _Alliance_ refused to weigh anchor until certain claims of theirs to wages and prize money were complied with, and, while John Paul Jones, their captain, was away at Paris, engaged in an effort to hasten the payment of the prize-money, Captain Peter Landais, acting under the advice of Arthur Lee and Commodore Gillon, took possession of the ship and sailed off for America. As soon as the news of the mutiny came to Franklin, he suspected that Arthur Lee was at the bottom of it.
I have no doubt [he wrote to Samuel Wharton, in regard to Landais] that your suspicion of his Adviser is well founded. That Genius must either find or make a Quarrel wherever he is. The only excuse for him that his Conduct will admit of, is his being at times out of his Senses. This I always allow, and am persuaded that if some of the many Enemies he provokes do not kill him sooner he will die in a madhouse.
The sequel of this high-handed proceeding afforded Franklin another opportunity to question Lee"s mental soundness. The _Alliance_ was not long out before Landais exhibited such flightiness that its pa.s.sengers deposed him, and placed the ship in command of its first lieutenant. Commenting on the incident, Franklin wrote to Samuel Cooper:
Dr. Lee"s accusation of Capt. Landais for Insanity was probably well founded; as in my Opinion would have been the same Accusation, if it had been brought by Landais against Lee; For tho" neither of them are permanently mad, they are both so at times; and the Insanity of the Latter is the most Mischievous.
How truly high-handed the rape of the _Alliance_ was, will be realized, when the reader is told that at the time Landais had been deprived of the captaincy of the _Alliance_, upon the charge of gross misconduct in the glorious engagement between the _Serapis_ and the _Bon Homme Richard_, and was looking forward to a court-martial in America upon specifications involving a capital offence; that he had abandoned the ship, and that Jones, who had won imperishable honor and renown in the conflict between the _Serapis_ and the _Bon Homme Richard_, had been placed in command of her by Franklin, and had been in command of her for eight months; and that Franklin had in a letter to Landais sternly refused to restore her to him.
Of William Lee, Franklin had, as we have just seen, very much the same opinion that he had of Arthur Lee. When he talked to Franklin of nominating Jonathan Williams, his grandnephew, and Mr. Lloyd in the place of Thomas Morris and himself as the Commercial Agents of the United States at Nantes, Franklin wrote to Williams: "I question whether there be Flesh enough upon the Bone for two to pick. I doubt its being worth your while to accept of it. I did not thank him for mentioning you because I do not wish to be much oblig"d to him and less to be a little oblig"d."
Not long after this, Franklin had less cause to think well of William Lee than ever. Upon representations being made by Ralph Izard and him to the three Commissioners, Arthur Lee, Deane and Franklin, that, though they had been appointed Ministers to the courts of Berlin, Vienna and Florence by Congress, no provision for their expenses had reached them, the three Commissioners asked what sums they would require. William Lee replied that he could not exactly compute in advance what he would need, but that, if he was empowered to draw upon the banker of the Commissioners, he would certainly only draw from time to time for such sums as were absolutely necessary; and that it was therefore a matter of little importance at what amount the credit was fixed. "It would however look handsome & confidential," he said, "if the sum were two Thousand Louis." Thereupon, Franklin tells us, the Commissioners "did frankly but unwarily give the Orders." Soon afterwards, Deane and Franklin were informed that William Lee and Izard had gone directly to the banker of the Commissioners, and drawn out the whole amount of the credit, and had deposited it to their own account exclusively. After that, even an order from Congress, empowering William Lee and Izard to draw upon the Commissioners for their expenses at foreign courts, was unavailing to open Franklin"s purse strings. Doubtless, he wrote with calm irony to the Committee on Foreign Affairs at home, Congress, when it pa.s.sed its resolution, intended to supply the Commissioners with funds for meeting the drafts of William Lee and Izard.
And, to make things still worse for the disappointed beneficiaries of the resolution, he further said: "I could have no intention to distress them, because I must know it is out of my Power, as their private Fortunes and Credit will enable them at all times to pay their own Expences."
Arthur Lee had taken good care to protect himself against any such afterclaps. In a formal letter to him, refusing to accede to his suggestion that no orders should be drawn upon the banker of the Commissioners, unless signed by all three of the Commissioners, Franklin told him flatly that he did not choose to be obliged to ask Mr. Lee"s consent, whenever he might have occasion to draw for his subsistence, as that a.s.sent could not be expected from any necessity of a reciprocal compliance on Mr. Franklin"s part, Mr. Lee having secured his subsistence by taking into his own disposition 185,000 livres, and his brother, by a deception on the Commissioners, 48,000.
Ralph Izard, of South Carolina, was very closely linked with Arthur Lee in Franklin"s mind. Though appointed by Congress Commissioner to the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany at Florence, this court refused to receive him for fear of offending England, and he remained in Paris during the entire period of his appointment. In a letter to James Lovell, Franklin stated that he had made it a constant rule to answer no angry, affronting or abusive letters, of which he had received many, and long ones, from Mr. Lee and Mr. Izard. The hostility of Izard to Franklin, due in the main to the same causes as Arthur Lee"s, was whetted partly by the fact that he was not consulted, when the treaty of alliance was entered into between the American Commissioners and France, and partly by the fact that Franklin refused to honor some of his pecuniary applications. In a letter from Pa.s.sy to Francis Hopkinson, Franklin, as we have seen, said that he deserved Izard"s enmity because he might have avoided it by paying him a compliment which he neglected, but elsewhere in his correspondence he rests this enmity upon substantially the same grounds as that of Arthur Lee. When Izard a.s.sailed him, because he had not conferred with him in relation to the treaty of alliance, Franklin replied that he would give his letter a full answer when he had the honor of seeing him. "But," he said, "I must submit to remain some days under the Opinion you appear to have form"d not only of my poor Understanding in the general Interests of America, but of my Defects in Sincerity, Politeness & Attention to your Instructions."
It is doubtful whether a letter in which, in reply to an application for money, he reminded Izard of the latter"s own pecuniary independence, was ever sent; but part of it is too pointed not to bear quotation. After dwelling upon the many calls upon the funds in the hands of the Commissioners, it goes on in these words:
In this Situation of our Affairs, we hope you will not insist on our giving you a farther Credit with our Banker, with whom we are daily in danger of having no farther Credit ourselves. It is not a Year since you received from us the sum of Two Thousand Guineas, which you thought necessary on Acct of your being to set out immediately for Florence. You have not incurr"d the Expence of that Journey. You are a Gentleman of Fortune. You did not come to France with any Dependence on being maintained here with your Family at the Expence of the United States, in the Time of their Distress, and without rendering them the equivalent Service they expected.
Izard seems to have had the kind of temper that heats as readily as iron but cools off as slowly as a footbrick, wrapped up in flannels.[37]
Speaking of the indignity, to which Franklin had been subjected in his sight before the Privy Council, he said: "When Dr. Franklin was so unmercifully bespattered by Wedderburn, I sat upon thorns; and had it been me that was so grossly insulted, I should instantly have repelled the attack, in defiance of every consequence." It is not unlikely that he would have been as good as his word, so prompt was the second, who had borne the challenge from Temple to Whately, to give free play to his irascible and imperious nature. But Graydon is our authority for the statement, too, that as long as four years after Izard had returned in the _Alliance_ from France to the United States, the name of Franklin could not be mentioned in his presence without hurrying him into a state of excitement.
Altogether, our readers will agree with us, we are sure, in thinking that few things in our national history are calculated to leave a more painful impression upon the mind than the conduct of some of the men, who were supposed to represent the United States abroad, while Franklin, in spite of the jarring discords, of which he was the innocent author, was manfully struggling with the responsibilities which belonged in part to others, but never really rested upon any but his own old shoulders (as he termed them).
By character and temperament, in some instances, they were conspicuously unfitted for the delicate tasks of diplomacy, and were too raw and rigidly set in their personal and national prejudices besides ever to succeed in repressing their dislike for the French. There can be no doubt, Jay aside, that they would have quarrelled with each other as rancorously as they did with Franklin but for the cohesion created by their common jealousy of him.
How indefensible their att.i.tude towards him was becomes all the more apparent when we recollect that rarely has any man ever been endowed with a mind or nature better fitted to disarm malice than those of Franklin. It is a hard judgment, not to be formed without due allowance for the extent to which the testimony of history is always suborned by the glamour of a great reputation, but it is nevertheless, we believe, only a just judgment, to declare that Franklin spoke the simple truth when he wrote to William Carmichael, "Lee and Izard are open, and, so far, honourable Enemies; the Adams, if Enemies, are more covered. I never did any of them the least Injury, and can conceive no other Source of their Malice but Envy." The excessive respect, shown him in France by all ranks of people, he said in the same letter, and the little notice taken of them, was a mortifying circ.u.mstance, but it was what he could neither prevent nor remedy.
This "excessive respect," or justly deserved fame, as the biographer of Franklin might call it, was another thing which contributed to Franklin"s brilliant success at the Court of France. When he arrived in that country, he was no stranger there. His two previous visits to it had made him well acquainted with Turgot, Quesnay, Dupont de Nemours, the elder Mirabeau, Dubourg and Morellet and the other members of the group, known as the Physiocrats, whose speculative pa.s.sion for Agriculture was one of the active intellectual forces of the time. His literary and scientific attainments had likewise won him the favor of other famous Frenchmen. These are facts of no slight importance, when we recall the extent to which the currents of French thought, on the eve of the French Revolution, were fed and directed by men of letters and philosophers. When Franklin found himself in France, for the third time, he was a member of the Royal Society at London and the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, and had been honored with academic degrees not only by Yale, Harvard and William and Mary in his own country, but by Oxford in England and St. Andrews in Scotland.[38] An edition of his scientific works had been translated into French by his friend Dubourg, and his _Way to Wealth_ had been translated into the same language, and distributed broadcast by bishops and cures among the members of their flocks as incentives to industry and frugality. It was in France, too, that D"Alibard had verified the sublime hypothesis of Franklin by drawing down the lightning from the clouds. Moreover, before he left England at the end of his second mission to that country, his activity and prominence in resisting the arbitrary measures of the British Ministry had made his political influence and standing thoroughly familiar to the French Cabinet, which had for many years kept a close watch upon every movement or event that portended a revolt of the American Colonies. Along with these solid claims to the attention and respect of the French people were certain other circ.u.mstances that strongly tended to heighten the fame of Franklin.
It was the era when the modern Press was beginning to a.s.sert its new-born power, and the fur cap, one of the badges of the mediaeval printer, that he wore, was hardly necessary to remind the newspapers of that day, with all their facilities for rouging public reputation by artful and persistent publicity, that Franklin was first of all a printer. It was also the era when the idea of the universal brotherhood of men of all cla.s.ses and races made an uncommonly strong appeal to democratic and humanitarian impulses.
Such an age could readily enough regard a man like Franklin as a true citizen of the world, a veritable friend of man and a torch-bearer of the new social and political freedom. It was also the era when it was the mode to indulge dreams of primitive beat.i.tude and idyllic simplicity, and around no figure could such dreams more naturally gather than that of the venerable and celebrated man, whose thin white hair, worn straight without wig or powder, plain dress and frank, direct speech seemed to make him the ideal exemplar of a state of society devoid of monarch, aristocrat or hierarch.[39]
That Franklin, when he came to Paris, as the representative of a country, which was not only at war with the hereditary enemy of France, but had fearlessly avowed general political sentiments, that France herself was eager to avow, should, with his fame, simple manners and social charm, have excited for a time the surpa.s.sing enthusiasm which he did is not surprising; for what the French ardently admire they usually festoon with fireworks and crown with flowers; but that this enthusiasm should have continued, so far as we can see, wholly unabated for nine years, is a surprising thing, indeed, when we recollect how inclined the fickle populace of every country is to beat in its hour of inevitable reaction the idol before which it has prostrated itself in its hour of infatuation.
While in France, Franklin was not simply the mode, he was the rage. Learned men from every part of Europe thought a visit to Paris quite incomplete, if it did not include a call upon him. Even the Emperor Joseph, "a King by trade," as he once termed himself, intrigued to meet him _incognito_. Among the many letters that he received from individuals, distinguished or obscure, who sought to flatter him or to draw upon his wisdom or treasured knowledge, was Robespierre--then a young advocate at Arras--who sent him a copy of his argument in defence of the lightning rod before the Council of Artois, and Marat who, true enough to his future, was investigating the physical laws of heat and flame. In the letter to Franklin, by which the copy of his argument was accompanied, Robespierre spoke of Franklin as "a man whose least merit is to be the most ill.u.s.trious _savant_ of the world."
To have a Franklin stove in its fireplace, with a portrait of Franklin on the wall above it, grew to be a common feature of the home of the wealthier householder in Paris. His spectacles, his marten fur cap, his brown coat, his bamboo cane became objects of general imitation. Canes and snuff-boxes were carried _a la Franklin_. Portraits, busts and medallions of him were multiplied without stint. Among the busts were some in Sevres china, set in blue stones with gold borders, and among the medallions were innumerable ones made of clay dug at Pa.s.sy.
The clay medallion of me [Franklin wrote to Sarah Bache] you say you gave to Mr. Hopkinson was the first of the kind made in France. A variety of others have been made since of different sizes; some to be set in the lids of snuff-boxes, and some so small as to be worn in rings; and the numbers sold are incredible.
These, with the pictures, busts, and prints (of which copies upon copies are spread everywhere) have made your father"s face as well known as that of the moon, so that he durst not do anything that would oblige him to run away, as his phiz would discover him wherever he should venture to show it.
It was computed that some two hundred different kinds of representations of his face were turned out to be set in rings, watches, snuff-boxes, bracelets, looking-gla.s.ses and other chattels. One print of him is said to have made the fortune of the engraver. Particularly striking is the testimony of John Adams to the fame of Franklin when in France, which is part of the remarkable letter published by him in the _Boston Patriot_ on May 11, 1811, in answer to Franklin"s strictures on his conduct in France:
His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire; and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them....
His name was familiar to government and people, to kings, courtiers, n.o.bility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a _valet de chambre_, coachman or footman, a lady"s chambermaid, or a scullion in a kitchen, who was not familiar with it, and who did not consider him as a friend to human kind.
When they spoke of him, they seemed to think he was to restore the golden age.
To the pen of Adams we are also indebted for an account of the first public meeting between Voltaire and Franklin, which also testified with such dramatic _eclat_ to the place occupied by Franklin in the hearts of the French people. This was at the hall of the Academy of Science in Paris.
Voltaire and Franklin were both present, and there presently arose a general cry that M. Voltaire and M.