Volume I Part 13 (2/2)
The spinning wheel was a fit symbol of the narrow, struggling life, which was to be Jane Mecom's portion, and which would have imposed upon her a load heavier than she could have borne if her good Philadelphia genius had not always been by her side, either in person or by his watchful proxy, Jonathan Williams, the father of his grandnephew of that name, to sustain her fainting footsteps. Children she had, and to spare, but they were all striking ill.u.s.trations of the truth, uttered by the Virginia planter, who affirmed that it is easier for one parent to take care of thirteen children than it is for thirteen children to take care of one parent. Nothing could be more beautiful than the relations between brother and sister; on the one side a vigilant sympathy and generosity which never lost sight for a moment of the object of their affectionate and helpful offices; on the other a grateful idolatry, slightly tinged with the reserve of reverence. Clothes, flour, firewood, money were among the more direct and material forms a.s.sumed by Franklin's a.s.sistance, given not begrudgingly and frugally, but always with the anxious fear, to no little extent justified by Jane's own unselfish and self-respecting reticence, that she was not as frank as she might be in laying before him the real measure of her necessities. ”Let me know if you want any a.s.sistance,” he was quick to ask her after his return from England in 1775, signing the letter in which he made the request, ”Your very loving brother.” ”Your bill is honoured,” he writes to her on another occasion after his return from France to Philadelphia. ”It is impossible for me always to guess what you may want, and I hope, therefore, that you will never be shy in letting me know wherein I can help to make your life more comfortable.”
How has my poor old Sister gone thro' the Winter? [he inquired of Jonathan Williams, the younger]. Tell me frankly whether she lives comfortably, or is pinched?
For I am afraid she is too cautious of acquainting me with all her Difficulties, tho' I am always ready and willing to relieve her when I am acquainted with them.
It is manifest that at times he experienced a serious sense of difficulty in doing for her as much as he was disposed to do, and once, when she had thanked him with even more than her usual emphasis for a recent benefaction, he parried her grat.i.tude with one of the humorous stories that served him for so many different purposes. Her letter of extravagant thanks, he said, put him in mind of the story of the member of Parliament who began one of his speeches with saying he thanked G.o.d that he was born and bred a Presbyterian; on which another took leave to observe that the gentleman must needs be of a most grateful disposition, since he was thankful for such very small matters. The truth is that her pecuniary condition was such that gifts, which might have seemed small enough to others, loomed large to her. Many doubtless were the s.h.i.+fts to which she had to resort to keep her large family going. When her brother was in London on his second mission, he received a letter from her asking him for some fine old linen or cambric dyed with bright colors, such as with all her own art and the aid of good old Uncle Benjamin's memoranda she had been unable, she said, to mix herself. With this material, she hoped that she and her daughter Jenny, who, with a little of her a.s.sistance, had taken to making flowers for the ladies' heads and bosoms with pretty good acceptance, might get something by it worth their pains, if they lived till next spring. Her language was manifestly that of a person whose life had been too pinched to permit her to deal with the future except at very close range. Of course, her request was complied with. The contrast between her situation in life and that of her prosperous and distinguished brother is brought out as clearly as the colors that she vainly sought to emulate in a letter written by her to Deborah, when she hears the rumor that Franklin had been made a Baronet and Governor of Pennsylvania. Signing herself, ”Your ladys.h.i.+p's affectionate sister, and obedient humble servant,” she wrote:
Dear Sister: For so I must call you, come what will, and if I do not express myself proper, you must excuse it, seeing I have not been accustomed to pay my compliments to Governor and Baronet's ladies. I am in the midst of a great wash, and Sarah still sick, and would gladly be excused writing this post, but my husband says I must write, and give you joy, which we heartily join in.
This was in 1758 when Franklin and other good Americans rarely alluded to England except as ”home”; but sixteen years later the feelings of Jane Mecom about baronetcies and colonial governors.h.i.+ps had undergone such a change--for she was a staunch patriot--that, when it was stated in a Boston newspaper that it was generally believed that Franklin had been promoted by the English Government to an office of superior importance, he felt that it was necessary to write to her as follows:
But as I am anxious to preserve your good opinion, and as I know your sentiments, and that you must be much afflicted yourself, and even despise me, if you thought me capable of accepting any office from this government, while it is acting with so much hostility towards my native country, I cannot miss this first opportunity of a.s.suring you, that there is not the least foundation for such a report.
You need not [he said on one occasion to Jane] be concern'd, in writing to me, about your bad Spelling; for, in my Opinion, as our Alphabet now Stands, the bad Spelling, or what is call'd so, is generally the best, as conforming to the Sound of the Letters and of the Words. To give you an Instance: A Gentleman receiving a Letter, in which were these Words,--_Not finding Brown at hom, I delivard your meseg to his yf_. The Gentleman finding it bad Spelling, and therefore not very intelligible, called his Lady to help him read it.
Between them they pick'd out the meaning of all but the _yf_, which they could not understand. The lady propos'd calling her Chambermaid: for Betty, says she, has the best knack at reading bad Spelling of anyone I know. Betty came, and was surprised, that neither Sir nor Madam could tell what _yf_ was. ”Why,” says she, ”_yf_ spells _Wife_; what else can it spell?” And, indeed, it is a much better, as well as shorter method of spelling _Wife_, than by _doubleyou_, _i_, _ef_, _e_, which in reality spells _doubleyifey_.
The affectionate interest felt by Franklin in his sister extended to her husband and children. Some of his letters were written to Jane and Edward Mecom jointly, and he evidently entertained a truly fraternal regard for the latter. The fortunes of the children he endeavored to promote by every means in his power. Benny Mecom was placed by him as an apprentice with his partner in the printing business in New York, Mr. Parker, and one of his most admirable letters is a letter to his sister Jane, already mentioned by us, in which he comments upon a complaint of ill-treatment at the hands of Mr. Parker which Benny had made to her. The wise, kindly and yet firm language in which he answers one by one the heads of Benny's complaint, which was obviously nothing more than the grumbling of a disaffected boy, lacks nothing but a subject of graver importance to be among the most notable of his letters. On the whole, it was too affectionate and indulgent in tone to have keenly offended even such parental fondness as that which led Poor Richard to ask, in the words of Gay,
”Where yet was ever found the mother Who'd change her b.o.o.by for another?”
But occasionally there is a sentence or so in it which makes it quite plain that Franklin was entirely too wise not to know that the rod has a function to perform in the management of a boy. Referring to Benny's habit of staying out at night, sometimes all night, and refusing to give an account of where he had spent his time or in what company, he said,
This I had not heard of before though I perceive you have. I do not wonder at his correcting him for that.
If he was my own son I should think his master did not do his duty by him if he omitted it, for to be sure it is the high road to destruction. And I think the correction very light, and not likely to be very effectual, if the strokes left no marks.
In the same letter, there is a sly pa.s.sage which takes us back to the part of Jacques' homily which speaks of
”The whining schoolboy with his satchel, And s.h.i.+ning morning face creeping like snail, Unwillingly to school.”
I did not think it anything extraordinary [Franklin said] that he should be sometimes willing to evade going to meeting, for I believe it is the case with all boys, or almost all. I have brought up four or five myself, and have frequently observed that if their shoes were bad they would say nothing of a new pair till Sunday morning, just as the bell rung, when, if you asked them why they did not get ready, the answer was prepared, ”I have no shoes,” and so of other things, hats and the like; or, if they knew of anything that wanted mending, it was a secret till Sunday morning, and sometimes I believe they would rather tear a little than be without the excuse.
Franklin had dipped deeply into the hearts of boys as well as men.
When Benny became old enough to enter upon business for himself, his uncle put him in possession of a printing outfit of his own at Antigua with the understanding that Benny was to pay him one third of the profits of the business; the proportion which he usually received in such cases.
Apparently there was every promise of success: an established newspaper, no competing printer, high prices and a printer who, whatever his faults, had come to be regarded by Mr. Parker as one of his ”best hands.” But the curse of Reuben--instability--rested upon Benny. Taking offence at a proposal of his uncle respecting the distribution of the profits of the business, really intended to pave the way, when Benny had conquered his ”flighty unsteadiness of temper,” to a gift of the whole printing outfit to him, the nephew insisted that his uncle should name some certain price for the outfit, and allow him to pay it off in instalments; for, though he had, he said, a high esteem for his uncle, yet he loved freedom, and his spirit could not bear dependence on any man, though he were the best man living.
Provoked by a delay in answering this letter, for which one of Franklin's long journeys was responsible, Benny again wrote to his uncle, stating that he had formed a fixed resolution to leave Antigua, and that nothing that could be said to him would move or shake it. Leave Antigua he did, and, when we next hear of him, it is through a letter from Franklin to Jane in which he tells her that Benjamin had settled his accounts with him, and paid the balance due him honorably, and had also made himself the owner of the printing outfit which had been s.h.i.+pped back from Antigua to Philadelphia.
From this time on until Benny slid down into the gulf of insolvency; owing his uncle some two hundred pounds, and leaving a.s.sets that the latter reckoned would scarce amount to four s.h.i.+llings in the pound, he seems to have had no success of any sort except that of winning the hand of a girl for whom Franklin and Deborah had a peculiar partiality. This was after Benny had returned to Boston and, as a bookseller as well as a printer, had begun life anew with a loan from his uncle, and with good credit.
When he was ”near being married” his uncle wrote to Jane:
I know nothing of that affair, but what you write me, except that I think Miss Betsey a very agreeable, sweet-tempered, good girl, who has had a housewifely education, and will make, to a good husband, a very good wife. Your sister and I have a great esteem for her; and, if she will be kind enough to accept of our nephew, we think it will be his own fault, if he is not as happy as the married state can make him. The family is a respectable one, but whether there be any fortune I know not; and, as you do not inquire about this particular, I suppose you think with me, that where everything else desirable is to be met with, that is not very material.
What Deborah thought of Miss Betsey may be inferred from a postscript that she hastily annexed to this letter: ”If Benny will promise to be one of the tenderest husbands in the world, I give my consent. He knows already what I think of Miss Betsey. I am his loving aunt.” In a subsequent letter, Franklin wrote to Deborah from London that he was glad that ”Ben has got that good girl.” Miss Betsey did not prove to be a fortune to her husband, though she did prove to be such a fruitful wife to him that, when the crash of bankruptcy came, there were a number of small children to be included in his schedule of liabilities. Nor is it easy to see how she or any other woman could prove a fortune to any man of whom such a picture could be sketched as that which Thomas, the author of the _History of Printing_, sketches of Benny as he was shortly after his return from Antigua.
Benjamin Mecom [writes Thomas] was in Boston several months before the arrival of his press and types from Antigua, and had much leisure. During this interval he frequently came to the house where I was an apprentice.
He was handsomely dressed, wore a powdered bob-wig, ruffles, and gloves: gentleman-like appendages, which the printers of that day did not a.s.sume--and thus appareled, he would often a.s.sist for an hour at the press.... I viewed him at the press with admiration. He indeed put on a ap.r.o.n to save his clothes from blacking, and guarded his ruffles.... He got the nickname of ”Queer Notions” among the printers.
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