Volume Ii Part 25 (1/2)
”6. That I got Five s.h.i.+llings by it.
”7. That none who are angry with me would have given me so much to let it alone.”
In answer to the accusation that printers sometimes printed vicious or silly things not worth reading, he charged the fact up to the vicious taste of the public itself. He had known, he said, a very numerous impression of Robin Hood's songs to go off in the Province at 2 s. per book in less than a twelvemonth, when a small quant.i.ty of David's Psalms (an excellent version) had lain upon his hands about twice that long.
In the ”Meditation on a Quart Mugg” Franklin begins with the exclamation, ”WRETCHED, miserable, and unhappy Mug!” and traces with mock sympathy all the misfortunes of its ign.o.ble and squalid career from the time that it is first forced into the company of boisterous sots, who lay all their nonsense, noise, profane swearing, cursing and quarrelling on it, though it speaks not a word, until the inevitable hour when it is broken into pieces, and finds its way for the most part back to Mother Earth. The paper is only a trifle, but a trifle fas.h.i.+oned with no little skill to hit the fancy of an age that, as Franklin's ”Drunkard's Vocabulary” (also published in the _Gazette_) shows, had innumerable cant terms for the condition for which the mug was held to such an unjust responsibility.
The paper on ”Shavers and Trimmers” is not so happy and well sustained, but its cla.s.sifications of the different species of persons, answering these descriptions, is not without humor. One sentence in it, when Franklin speaks of the species of Shavers and Trimmers, who ”cover (what is called by an eminent Preacher) _their poor Dust_ in tinsel Cloaths and gaudy Plumes of Feathers,” reads like a paragraph in the _Courant_. ”A competent Share of religious Horror thrown into the Countenance,” he says, ”with proper Distortions of the Face, and the Addition of a lank Head of Hair, or a long Wig and Band, commands a most profound Respect to Insolence and Ignorance.”
The paper on the ”Exporting of Felons to the Colonies” is marked by the grim, biting irony of Swift, but was no severer than the practice of setting British criminals at large in America deserved. Such tender parental concern, Franklin said, called aloud for due returns of grat.i.tude and duty, and he suggested that these returns should a.s.sume the form of rattlesnakes, ”Felons-convict from the Beginning of the World.” In the spring of the year, when they first crept out of their holes, they were feeble, heavy, slow and easily taken, and, if a small bounty was allowed per head, some thousands might be collected annually, and transported to Britain. There he proposed that they should be carefully distributed in St.
James' Park, in the Spring Gardens, and other pleasure resorts about London, and in the gardens of all the n.o.bility and gentry throughout the nation, but particularly in the gardens of the Prime Ministers, the Lords of Trade and Members of Parliament; for to them they were most particularly obliged. Such a paper, it is needless to say, was better calculated for its purpose than a thousand appeals of the ordinary type would have been.
The speech of Polly Baker is one of the most famous of Franklin's _jeux d'esprit_. The introduction to it states that it was delivered when she was prosecuted for the fifth time for having a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child, and with such effect that the court decided not to punish her; indeed with such effect that one of her judges even married her the next day, and in time had fifteen children by her. The perfectly ingenuous manner in which the traverser refuses to admit that she has committed any offence whatever and insists that, in default of honorable suitors, she has but dutifully, though irregularly, complied with the first and great command of nature and nature's G.o.d--increase and multiply--is undoubtedly, coa.r.s.e as it is, a stroke of art, but the performance is too gross for modern scruples.
More decorous reading is the fict.i.tious discourse by a Spanish Jesuit on the ”Meanes of disposing the Enemie to Peace,” which Franklin, during his first mission to England, contributed to the _London Chronicle_ for the purpose of rousing the English people to a sense of the artifices, that were being employed by the French to build up a party in England for peace at any price. In the introduction to the discourse, it is stated that it was taken from a book containing a number of discourses, addressed by the Jesuit to the King of Spain in 1629, and that nothing was needed to render it _apropos_ to the existing situation of England except the subst.i.tution of France for Spain. The discourse points out in detail, with shrewd insight into all the selfish and timid impulses, by which a society is corrupted or enervated, when cunningly practised upon, the different cla.s.ses in the country of the enemy that could be manipulated in one way or another until no sound but that of Peace, Peace, Peace would be heard from any quarter.
_The Craven Street Gazette_, written in mock court language, and replete with the subtle suggestions of household intimacy, is one of the most exquisite triumphs of Franklin's wit and fancy.
This morning [it begins], Queen Margaret, accompanied by her first maid of honour, Miss Franklin, (Sally Franklin) set out for Rochester. Immediately on their departure, the whole street was in tears--from a heavy shower of rain. It is whispered, that the new family administration which took place on her Majesty's departure, promises, like all other new administrations, to govern much better than the old one.
We hear, that the great person (so called from his enormous size), of a certain family in a certain street, is grievously affected at the late changes, and could hardly be comforted this morning, though the new ministry promised him a roasted shoulder of mutton and potatoes for his dinner.
It is said, that the same great person intended to pay his respects to another great personage this day, at St. James's, it being coronation-day; hoping thereby a little to amuse his grief; but was prevented by an accident, Queen Margaret, or her maid of honour having carried off the key of the drawers, so that the lady of the bed-chamber could not come at a laced s.h.i.+rt for his Highness. Great clamours were made on this occasion against her Majesty.
And so the _Gazette_ goes on, gay and graceful as the play of suns.h.i.+ne on the surface of a dimpled sea, from incident to incident that took place during the absence of Queen Margaret (Mrs. Stevenson) and Miss Franklin, investing each with a ceremonious dignity and importance that never descend to buffoonery.
These are some of the occurrences chronicled as taking place on the first Sunday after the departure of the Queen. Walking up and down in his room we might observe was one of Franklin's ways of taking exercise.
Lord and Lady Hewson walked after dinner to Kensington, to pay their duty to the Dowager, and Dr. Fatsides made four hundred and sixty-nine turns in his dining-room, as the exact distance of a visit to the lovely Lady Barwell, whom he did not find at home; so there was no struggle for and against a kiss, and he sat down to dream in the easy-chair that he had it without any trouble.
And these are some of the observations made under the date of the succeeding Tuesday.
It is remark'd, that the Skies have wept every Day in Craven Street, the Absence of the Queen.
The Publick may be a.s.sured that this Morning a certain _great_ Personage was asked very complaisantly by the Mistress of the Household, if he would chuse to have the Blade-Bone of Sat.u.r.day's Mutton that had been kept for his Dinner to-day _broil'd_ or _cold_. _He answer'd gravely, If there is any Flesh on it, it may be broil'd; if not, it may as well be cold._ Orders were accordingly given for Broiling it. But when it came to Table, there was indeed so very little Flesh, or rather none, (Puss having din'd on it yesterday after Nanny)[57] that if our new Administration had been as good Oeconomists as they would be thought, the Expence of Broiling might well have been saved to the Publick, and carried to the Sinking Fund. It is a.s.sured the _great_ Person bears all with infinite Patience. But the Nation is astonish'd at the insolent Presumption, that dares treat so much Mildness in so cruel a manner!
Under the same date is made the announcement that at six o'clock, that afternoon, news had come by the post that her Majesty arrived safely at Rochester on Sat.u.r.day night. ”The Bells,” the _Gazette_ adds, ”immediately rang--for Candles to illuminate the Parlour, the Court went into Cribbidge, and the Evening concluded with every other Demonstration of Joy.” This is followed by a letter to the _Gazette_ from a person signing himself ”Indignation,” who says that he makes no doubt of the truth of the statement that a certain great person is half-starved on the blade-bone of a sheep by a set of the most careless, worthless, thoughtless, inconsiderate, corrupt, ignorant, blundering, foolish, crafty & knavish ministers that ever got into a house and pretended to govern a family and provide a dinner. ”Alas for the poor old England of Craven Street!” this correspondent exclaims, ”If they continue in Power another Week, the Nation will be ruined. Undone, totally undone, if I and my Friends are not appointed to succeed them.”
This letter is accompanied by another signed, ”A Hater of Scandal,” which takes ”Indignation” to task, and declares that the writer believes that, even if the Angel Gabriel would condescend to be their minister, and provide their dinners, he would scarcely escape newspaper defamation from a gang of hungry, ever-restless, discontented and malicious scribblers. It was a piece of justice, he declared, that the publisher of the _Gazette_ owed to their righteous administration to undeceive the public on this occasion by a.s.suring them of the fact, which is that there was provided and actually smoking on the table under his royal nose at the same instant as the blade-bone as fine a piece of ribs of beef roasted as ever knife was put into, with potatoes, horse-radish, pickled walnuts &c. which his Highness might have eaten, if so he had pleased to do.
Along with the political intelligence and the letters the _Gazette_ also contains these notices and stock quotations:
MARRIAGES, none since our last--but Puss begins to go a Courting.
DEATHS, In the back Closet and elsewhere, many poor Mice.
STOCKS Biscuit--very low. Buckwheat & Indian Meal--both sour. Tea, lowering daily--in the Canister. Wine, shut.
The _Pet.i.tion of the Letter Z_ was a humorous offshoot of Franklin's Reformed Alphabet. In a formal complaint after the manner of a bill in chancery, to the wors.h.i.+pful Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Censor-General, Z complains that his claims to respect are as good as those of the other letters of the Alphabet, but that he had not only been placed at its tail, when he had as much right as any of his companions to be at its head, but by the injustice of his enemies had been totally excluded from the word WISE and his place filled by a little hissing, crooked, serpentine, venomous letter, called S, though it must be evident to his wors.h.i.+p and to all the world that W, I, S, E does not spell _Wize_ but _Wise_. The pet.i.tion ends with the prayer that, in consideration of his long-suffering and patience, the pet.i.tioner may be placed at the head of the Alphabet, and that S may be turned out of the word _wise_, and the Pet.i.tioner employed instead of him.
Z did not make out his case, for at the foot of the pet.i.tion is appended this order: ”Mr. Bickerstaff, having examined the allegations of the above pet.i.tion, judges and determines, that Z be admonished to be content with his station, forbear reflections upon his brother letters, and remember his own small usefulness, and the little occasion there is for him in the Republic of Letters, since S whom he so despises can so well serve instead of him.”