Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (79 page)

26
. Arthur Lee’s journal, Nov. 27, 1777, in Richard Lee,
Life of Arthur Lee
(Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829), 1:354; Hale and Hale,
Benjamin Franklin in France,
1:159; Papers 25:234n.

27
. Franklin statement, Dec. 4, 1777; BF to Vergennes, Dec. 4, 1777; Lee,
Life of Arthur Lee,
1:357; Alsop 93–94; Doniol,
History of the Participation of France,
2:625. See also Dull,
A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution,
89. Dull argues that for months the French had been planning to enter the war against Britain in early 1778 once their naval rearmament program permitted; the American victory at Saratoga, he contends, was not a major factor. Others dispute this view. See Claude Van Tyne, “Influences Which Determined the French Government to Make Their Treaty with America,”
American Historical Review
21 (1915–16): 528, cited by Dull.

28
. Alsop 103; Cecil Currey,
Code Number 72
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 175–92. Currey devotes an entire chapter to the Wentworth meeting. It seems somewhat overdrawn in its assessment of Franklin’s duplicity, but it is carefully annotated and researched. See also James Perkins,
France and the American Revolution
(New York: Franklin, 1970), 203–4.

29
. Paul Wentworth to William Eden, Dec. 25, 1777, Jan. 7, 1778; Van Doren 592; Currey,
Code Number 72,
186; Dull,
Franklin the Diplomat,
29.

30
. BF to Thomas Cushing, for Congress, Feb. 27, 1778.

31
. R. M. Bache, “Franklin’s Ceremonial Coat,”
PMHB
23 (1899); 444–52, quote is on 450.

32
. Edward Bancroft to Paul Wentworth, as deciphered, Jan. 22, 28, 1778, Auckland Papers, Add Mss 46491, f1 and f1b; Edward Bancroft memo to the Marquis of Camarthen, Sept. 17, 1784, Foreign Office papers 4:3, Public Records Office, London; Edward Bancroft to Thomas Walpole, under cover to Mr. White, with two pages of invisible ink, Nov. 3, 1777, Auckland Papers, Add Mss 34414, f.304; Edward Bancroft note, unsigned and undated, sent to Samuel Wharton, with two pages of white ink, November 1777, Auckland Papers, Add Mss 34414, f.306; Samuel Wharton letters to Edward Bancroft, 1778, Auckland Papers, Add Mss 321, ff6–35; Silas Deane’s accounts with Edward Bancroft, Feb, 1778, Aug. 1779, the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, series 4, folder 9.12.

Jonathan Dull discusses Bancroft’s stock manipulations in
Franklin the Diplomat,
33–36, and notes that Silas Deane, although in his opinion not a spy, was also able to make money by speculating with Wharton on Bancroft’s inside information. Also in on the scheme was Thomas Walpole, the wealthy and well-connected London banker who had tried with Franklin to win a land grant in Ohio. Deane died of poisoning in 1789 as he was preparing to sail from London to Canada, and some have speculated that he was murdered by Bancroft, an expert in poisons.

33
. Lopez
Cher,
179–83; Alsop 108–10; Van Doren 595; Clark 341.

34
. Van Doren 593; Edmund Morgan,
The Birth of the Republic
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 83; Gordon Wood, “Not So Poor Richard,”
The New York Review of Books,
June 6, 1996; Samuel Cooper to BF, May 14, 1778. See also Samuel Cooper to BF, July 1, 1778, in which the Boston clergyman describes how the treaty thwarted England’s attempts to lure Congress into a reconciliation and how information sent by Franklin and Adams about a British convoy of eleven warships would be passed along, presumably to warn French admiral d’Estaing.

1
. Edward Bancroft, “most secret extracts,” Apr. 2, 16, 1778, British Library, Auckland papers, Add MSS 34413, f405–7; Middlekauff 171; McCullough 197, 204, 208, 239. Middlekauff’s chapter on Adams in his book, pp. 171–202, is a vivid look at the vagaries of their relationship. McCullough, 210–15, provides an authoritative assessment of their feelings about each other, with some deference to Adams.

2
. Adams to James Lovell, Feb. 20, 1779, Adams Letters 4:118–19; Middlekauff 189.

3
. Lopez
Private,
237; Lopez
Cher,
9. The quote is from Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis,
Complete Works
(Paris: Bossange frères, 1825), 2:267.

4
. Brands 547–48; Adams Diary 2:391, 4:69.

5
. BF to Robert Livingston, July 22, 1783.

6
. Diderot, editor,
Enyclopédie,
www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/projects/ encyc/; Alsop 13; Harold Nicolson,
The Age of Reason
(London: Constable, 1960), 268.

7
. Most accounts say, I think mistakenly, that it was Temple who received the benediction. Smith 60, 187 traces the mystery and convincingly concludes that the “boy” was actually his younger grandson Benny, who was 7 at the time, rather than Temple, who was about 18. Aldridge
French,
10, says it was Temple, but in his later writings, including
Voltaire and the Century of Light
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 399, he revises his opinion. Claude-Anne Lopez tells me that Temple used a wax seal with the phrase “God and Liberty,” which leads her to believe it may have been Temple. See also Voltaire to the Abbé Gaultier, Feb. 21, 1778, in
The Works of Voltaire
(Paris: Didot, 1829), 1:290; Hutchinson Diary and Letters 2:276. The newspaper quoted is
Les Memoirs Secret,
Feb. 22, 1778, in Aldridge
French,
10.

8
. Aldridge
French,
12; Adams Diary 3:147; Van Doren 606.

9
. Lopez
Life,
148–57; Van Doren 655–56; Lemay
Reappraising,
145.

10
. Lopez
Cher,
34, 29. As one of the Yale editors, Lopez’s specialty was analyzing Franklin’s papers from his period in France. Her translations, astute assessments, and personal discussions with me informed this chapter.

11
. Madame Brillon to BF, July 30, 1777.

12
. Madame Brillon to BF, Mar. 7, 1778; BF to Madame Brillon, Mar. 10, 1778.

13
. Madame Brillon to BF, May 3, 8, 1779; Lopez
Cher,
40, 61–62; Adams Letters 4:46; Brands 552.

14
. BF to Madame Brillon, July 27, 1778. Lib. of Am. uses a version dated 1782, and some sources have the final article worded differently. The version I have used is from the Yale Papers and the American Philosophical Society; Papers 27:164.

15
. Madame Brillon to BF, Mar. 16, 17, 18, Apr. 26, June 9, July 27, Sept. 13, 17, 1778; BF to Madame Brillon, July 27, Sept. 1, 15, 1778.

16
. Madame Brillon to BF, Sept. 13, 1778; BF to Madame Brillon, Sept. 15, 1778; Lopez
Cher,
29–121.

17
. “The Ephemera,” Sept. 20, 1778, Lib. of Am. 922; A. Owen Aldridge, “Sources for Franklin’s Ephemera,”
New England Quarterly
27 (1954): 388.

18
. BF to Madame Brillon, Nov. 29, 1777; Madame Brillon to BF, Nov. 30, 1777 (the chess game partner was their neighbor Louis-Guillaume le Veillard); Papers 25:204, 25:218); Madame Brillon to BF, Dec. 10, 15, 20, 1778; BF to Madame Brillon, Dec. 11?, 1778.

19
. Lopez
Cher,
243–48. Lopez draws on Antoine Guillois,
Le Salon de Madame Helvétius
(Paris: Calmann Levy, 1894). Claude-Adrien Helvétius,
De l’Esprit
(Paris, 1758; English translation,
Essays on the Mind,
London, 1759); it was publicly burned in Paris but also one of the most widely read books of its time. See gallica.bnf.fr/Fonds_textes/T0088614.htm ; www.aei.ca/˜anbou/mhelv.html.

20
. Aldridge
French,
162; Gilbert Chinard, “Abbé Lefebvre de la Roche’s Recollections of Benjamin Franklin,”
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
(1950).

21
. BF to Madame Helvétius, Oct. 31, 1778.

22
. Aldridge
French,
165; Adams Papers 2:55.

23
. BF to Madame Helvétius, through Cabanis, Sept. 19, 1779. It is possible that Poupon was a cat, but we know she had a dog and this is more likely.

24
. “The Flies,” Papers 34:220; Lib. of Am., 991 (the date of this piece is unkown and in dispute); Lopez
Cher,
260. See also Lopez
Cher,
371n.32 arguing that some biographers “overdramatize” Franklin’s proposal to Madame Helvétius whereas others discount it too much.

25
. “The Elysian Fields,” Dec. 7, 1778, Lib. of Am. 924.

26
. Turgot to Pierre du Pont de Nemours, June 24, 1780, in Lopez
Cher,
170.

27
. BF to Thomas Bond, Mar. 16, 1780.

28
. Aldridge
French,
183. For a good assessment, see Richard Amacher,
Franklin’s Wit and Folly: The Bagatelles
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953).

29
. Poem from Madame Brillon to BF, Oct., 1780, translation in Lopez
Cher,
78; “Dialogue with the Gout,” Oct. 22, 1780.

30
. Madame Brillon to BF, Nov. 18, 26, 1780; Lopez
Cher,
79–81; Aldridge
French,
166.

31
. Lopez
Cher,
25–26.

32
. “Conte,” dated Dec. 1778 in Papers 28:308 and early 1779 by Lemay in Lib. of Am. 938; Aldridge
French,
173; Lopez
Cher,
90.

33
. Abbé Flamarens, Jan. 15, 1777, in Aldridge
French,
61.

34
. “The Morals of Chess,” June 28, 1779; Papers 29:750–56 also includes the Junto notes he made in 1732. See also Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg to BF, July 3, 1779, which mentions a “refutation” of Franklin’s points.

35
. Aldridge
French,
197; Jefferson Papers 18:168.

36
. “An Economical Project,”
Journal of Paris,
Apr. 26, 1784; Poor Richard’s, 1735. See also http://www.standardtime.com ; http://www.energy.ca.gov/daylight saving.html ; http ://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving.

37
. Aldridge
French,
178

38
. “To the Royal Academy of ***,” May 19, 1780, or after, Lib. of Am. 952. See also, Carl Japsky, ed.,
Fart Proudly
(Columbus, Ohio: Enthea Press, 1990).

39
. BF to the Abbé Morellet, ca. July 5, 1779.

40
. SF to BF, Jan. 17, 1779; BF to SF, June 3, 1779. General Howe had been replaced by Sir Henry Clinton, who evacuated his British troops from Philadelphia in May 1778 to concentrate on the defense of New York. General Washington tried and failed to stop the British in a battle in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and Clinton’s troops safely ensconced themselves in New York.

41
. SB to BF, Sept. 14, 1779; BF to SB, Mar. 16, 1780. See the poignant chapter “No Watch for Benny, No Feathers for Sally,” in Lopez
Private,
215–32.

42
. SF to BF, Jan. 17, Sept. 25, 1779, Sept. 8, 1780; BF to SF, June 3, 1779.

43
. RB to BF, July 28, 1780; SF to BF, Sept. 9, 1780; BF to RB and SF, Oct. 4, 1780.

44
. BF to SF, June 3, 1779.

45
. BF to Benjamin Bache, Aug. 19, 1779, Apr. 16, 1781. For a well-researched and insightful assessment of their relationship, see Smith, in particular 67–70, 77–82. Also Lopez
Private,
221–30.

46
. BF to Benjamin Bache, Jan. 25, 1782. See also May 3, 30, Aug. 19, 1779, July 18, 1780. Gabriel Louis de Marignac to BF, Nov. 20, 1781.

47
. Catherine Cramer to BF, May 15, 1781; RB to BF, July 22, 1780.

48
. BF to Benjamin Bache, Sept. 25, 1780; SB to BF, Jan. 14, 1781.

49
. Benjamin Bache to BF, Jan. 30, 1783; BF to Benjamin Bache, May 2, 1783; BF to Johonnot, Jan. 26, 1782.

50
. BF to the Brillons, Apr. 20, Oct. 30, 1781; Madame Brillon to BF, Apr. 20, Oct. 20, 1781; Lopez
Cher,
91–101.

1
. BF to James Lovell (for Congress), July 22, 1778; Richard Bache to BF, Oct. 22, 1778; Van Doren 609.

2
. BF to John Adams, Apr. 3, 24, May 10, June 5, 1779; John Adams to BF, Apr. 13, 29, May 14, 17, 1779; Middlekauff 190–92; McCullough 210–14; Schoenbrun 229.

3
. RB to BF, Oct. 8, 22, 1778; BF to RB, June 2, 1779; BF to SF, June 3, 1779.