Volume I Part 13 (1/2)

If so, they are put to the best use they possibly can be.

I hope you visit sister as often as your affairs will permit, and afford her what a.s.sistance and comfort you can in her present situation. _Old age_, _infirmities_, and _poverty_, joined, are afflictions enough. The _neglect_ and _slights_ of friends and near relations should never be added. People in her circ.u.mstances are apt to suspect this sometimes without cause; _appearances_ should therefore be attended to, in our conduct towards them, as well as _realities_.

And then follows the sentence which indicates that, apart from the value, which belonged to his advice on any practical point, there was good reason why his views about sister Dowse's house and finery should be ent.i.tled to peculiar respect. ”I write by this post to cousin Williams,” he said, ”to continue his care, which I doubt not he will do.”

This letter was addressed to his sister Jane. In another to her, written a few weeks later, he said, ”I am glad you have resolved to visit sister Dowse oftener; it will be a great comfort to her to find she is not neglected by you, and your example may, perhaps, be followed by some others of her relations.” In the succeeding year, when he was settled in England, he writes to his sister Jane, ”My wife will let you see my letter, containing an account of our travels, which I would have you read to sister Dowse, and give my love to her.”

Another sister of Franklin, Mary, married Captain Robert Holmes. He was the master of a sloop that plied between Boston and the Delaware, and, when he heard at New Castle that his run-a-way brother-in-law was living in Philadelphia, he wrote to him begging him to return to Boston, and received from him a reply, composed with so much literary skill that Governor Keith of Pennsylvania, when the letter was shown to him by Holmes, declared that the writer appeared to be a young man of promising parts, and should be encouraged. Mrs. Holmes died of cancer of the breast, which is responsible for the only occasion perhaps on which Franklin was ever known to incline his ear to the virtues of a nostrum.

We have here in town [he wrote to his sister Jane] a kind of sh.e.l.l made of some wood, cut at a proper time, by some man of great skill (as they say), which has done wonders in that disease among us, being worn for some time on the breast. I am not apt to be superst.i.tiously fond of believing such things, but the instances are so well attested, as sufficiently to convince the most incredulous.

Another sister of Franklin, Lydia, married Robert Scott, but our information about her is very meagre.

This is also true of Anne Harris, still another sister of his. We do know, however, that some of her family wandered away to London before Franklin left America on his mission to France, and that one of them took pains to apprise him of her urgent wants after he arrived there. She was, she said, ”Obliged to Worke very hard and Can But just git the common necessarys of life,” and therefore had ”thoughts of going into a family as housekeeper ... having lived in that station for several years and gave grate satisfaction.” With a curious disregard to existing conditions, quite unworthy of her connection with her ill.u.s.trious relative, she even asked him to aid her in securing the promotion of her son in the British Navy.

A daughter of this sister, Grace Harris, married Jonathan Williams, a Boston merchant engaged in the West India trade, who enjoyed the honor of acting as the moderator of the meetings held at Faneuil Hall in 1773 for the purpose of preventing the landing of the odious tea. She must have been an elated mother when she received from her uncle in 1771 a letter in which he spoke of her two sons in these terms:

They are, I a.s.sure you, exceeding welcome to me; and they behave with so much Prudence, that no two young Men could possibly less need the Advice you would have me give them. Josiah is very happily employ'd in his Musical Pursuits. And as you hinted to me, that it would be agreeable to you, if I employ'd Johnathan in Writing, I requested him to put my Accounts in Order, which had been much neglected. He undertook it with the utmost chearfulness and Readiness, and executed it with the greatest Diligence, making me a compleat new Set of Books, fairly written out and settled in a Mercantile Manner, which is a great Satisfaction to me, and a very considerable service. I mention this, that you may not be in the least Uneasy from an Apprehension of their Visit being burthensome to me; it being, I a.s.sure you, quite the contrary.

It has been wonderful to me to see a young Man from America, in a Place so full of various Amus.e.m.e.nts as London is, as attentive to Business, as diligent in it, and keeping as close at home till it was finished, as if it had been for his own Profit; and as if he had been at the Public Diversions so often, as to be tired of them.

I pray G.o.d to keep and preserve you and yours, and give you again, in due time, a happy Sight of these valuable Sons.

The same favorable opinion of these two grandnephews found expression in a letter from Franklin to his sister Jane. Josiah, he said, had attained his heart's desire in being under the tuition of Mr. Stanley (the musical composer), who, though he had long left off teaching, kindly undertook, at Franklin's request, to instruct him, and was much pleased with his quickness of apprehension, and the progress he was making, and Jonathan appeared a very valuable young man, sober, regular and inclined to industry and frugality, which were promising signs of success in business. ”I am very happy in their Company,” the letter further stated.

With the help of Franklin, Jonathan, one of these two young men, became the naval agent of the United States at Nantes, when Franklin was in France.

Later, he was charged by Arthur Lee with improperly retaining in his hands in this capacity upwards of one hundred thousand livres due to the United States, and Franklin insisted that Arthur Lee should make good his charge.

I have no desire to screen Mr. Williams on acct of his being my Nephew [he said] if he is guilty of what you charge him with. I care not how soon he is deservedly punish'd and the family purg'd of him; for I take it that a Rogue living in (a) Family is a greater Disgrace to it than one _hang'd out_ of it.

But, when steps were taken by Franklin to have the accounts pa.s.sed upon by a body of disinterested referees, Lee haughtily refused to reduce his vague accusation to a form sufficiently specific to be laid before them. After John Adams succeeded Silas Deane, Franklin and himself united in executing an order for the payment to Williams of the balance claimed by him, but Adams had been brought over to the suspicions of Lee to such an extent that the order provided that it was not to be understood as an approval of the accounts, but that Williams was to be responsible to Congress for their correctness. With such impetuosity did Adams adopt these suspicions that, in a few days after his arrival at Paris, when he had really had no opportunity to investigate the matter, he concurred with Lee in ordering Williams to close his existing accounts and to make no new ones. This, of course, was equivalent to dismissal from the employment. Franklin, probably realizing not only the hopelessness of a contest of one against two, but the unwisdom from a public point of view of feeding the flame of such a controversy, united with his colleagues in signing the order.[27]

A bequest of books that he made to Williams is one among many other still more positive proofs that his confidence in his grandnephew was never impaired, and it is only fair to the memory of Adams to suppose that, if he ever had any substantial doubts about Williams' integrity, they were subsequently dispelled, for when President he appointed Williams a major of artillery in the federal army; an appointment which ultimately resulted in his being made the first Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. The quarrel, however, did neither Franklin nor the American cause any good. It gave additional color to the accusation that he was too quick to billet his relatives upon the public, and had the effect also of intensifying the dissensions between our representatives in France which const.i.tute such a painful chapter in the history of the American Revolution. To make things worse, Jonathan failed in business, before he left France, and had to obtain a _surseance_ against his creditors through the application of his granduncle to the Count de Vergennes.

Franklin's sister, Sarah, did not long survive her marriage to Joseph Davenport. Her death, Franklin wrote to his sister Jane, ”was a loss without doubt regretted by all that knew her, for she was a good woman.” It was at his instance that Davenport removed to Philadelphia, and opened a bakery where he sold ”choice middling bisket,” and occasionally ”Boston loaf sugar” and ”choice pickled and spiced oisters in cags.”

There is a letter from Franklin to Josiah Davenport, the son of Sarah Davenport, written just after the failure of the latter in business which shows that, open as the door of the Post Office usually was to members of the Franklin family, it was sometimes slammed with a bang in the face of a _mauvais sujet_ of that blood. Franklin advises Josiah not to think of any place in the Post Office.

The money you receive [he said] will slip thro' your Fingers, and you will run behind hand imperceptibly, when your Securities must suffer, or your Employers. I grow too old to run such Risques, and therefore wish you to propose nothing more of the kind to me. I have been hurt too much by endeavouring to help Cousin Ben Mecom. I have no Opinion of the Punctuality of Cousins.

They are apt to take Liberties with Relations they would not take with others, from a Confidence that a Relation will not sue them. And tho' I believe you now resolve and intend well in case of such an Appointment, I can have no Dependence that some unexpected Misfortune or Difficulty will not embarras your Affairs and render you again insolvent. Don't take this unkind.

It is better to be thus free with you than to give you Expectations that cannot be answered.

So Josiah, who was keeping a little shop at the time, like the famous office-seeker, who is said to have begun by asking Lincoln for an office and to have ended by asking him for a pair of trousers, had to content himself with a gift of four dozen of Evans' maps, ”which,” said Franklin in his letter, ”if you can sell you are welcome to apply the Money towards Clothing your Boys, or to any other Purpose.”

But, of all Franklin's collateral relatives, the one that he loved best was his sister Jane, the wife of Edward Mecom. She survived her brother four years, dying at the age of eighty-two, and, from her childhood until his death, they cherished for each other the most devoted affection. Her letters show that she was a woman of uncommon force of character and mind, and the possessor of a heart so overflowing with tenderness that, when she heard of the birth of Mrs. Bache's seventh child, she even stated to her brother in her delight that she was so fond of children that she longed to kiss and play with every clean, healthy one that she saw on the street.

Mrs. Bache, she thought, might yet be the mother of twelve children like herself, though she did not begin so young.

In a letter written to her by Franklin from Philadelphia just after he reached his majority, and when she was a fresh girl of fourteen, he reminds her that she was ever his peculiar favorite. He had heard, he said, that she was grown a celebrated beauty, and he had almost determined to give her a tea table, but when he considered that the character of a good housewife was far preferable to that of being only a pretty gentlewoman he had concluded to send her a spinning wheel, as a small token of his sincere love and affection. Then followed this priggish advice:

Sister, farewell, and remember that modesty, as it makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, so the want of it infallibly renders the most perfect beauty disagreeable and odious. But, when that brightest of female virtues s.h.i.+nes among other perfections of body and mind in the same person, it makes the woman more lovely than an angel.