The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers

by Thomas Fleming

  After they parted, and Ben returned to Philadelphia, he wrote Katy a wry letter describing the experience from his side. For a while, on his return journey, he “almost forgot I had a home.” He was lost in romantic visions of an ecstatic sojourn with Katy in some little-known inn or forest bower. But as he drew closer to his adopted city, he began driving his horse faster and faster until “a very few days brought me to my own house and to the arms of my good old wife and children.”6

  For a while their letters continued to glow with suppressed passion. Katy sought his advice on new affairs of the heart, and Franklin responded with warnings that she had better not appear “too knowing.” When Katy told him she would send him kisses on the wind, Ben replied that northeast storms, which traveled south from New England—one of his early scientific discoveries—were often blamed for depressing people. Now their gray clouds and freezing winds would no longer bother him. “Your favors come mixed with the snowy fleeces which are as pure as your virgin innocence, white as your lovely bosom—and as cold.”7

  Ben added that Deborah was aware of their correspondence and threatened to leave him to Katy in her will. “She is willing I should love you as much as you are willing to be loved by me.” The sorcerer was wryly reminding Katy that in the arithmetic of ordinary love, this added up to very little. But in the emerging world of romantic love, there were exquisite gradations of emotion that approached but did not reach physical expression yet could mean a great deal on both sides. Both Ben and Katy sensed that they had experienced feelings neither would forget.8

  VI

  Absorbed in politics and business, Ben Franklin did little to protect William from his stepmother’s antagonism. At the age of fifteen, the boy advertised his unhappiness by trying to run away to sea. Ben heard about it before the ship sailed, rushed to the docks, and obtained William’s release from the captain. He protested in a letter to his sister Jane that “no one imagined it was hard use at home that made him do this.” The remark suggests that the busy father was not paying much attention to William’s trials with Deborah. But the attempted escape troubled him nevertheless. One of Ben’s older brothers had run away to sea and had never been heard from again.9

  Ben obtained a commission for William in a Pennsylvania regiment formed to help fight the French in Canada during a colonial clash called King George’s War. William liked being a soldier and won a promotion to captain, but the war ended before he saw any battlefield action. Back home, he persuaded his father to let him move out of the house to a nearby set of rooms beyond the reach of his stepmother’s harangues.

  William’s military bearing and aura of adventure, plus his good looks, enabled him to circulate with ease in the upper echelon of Philadelphia society. When Ben was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, he made sure William was appointed to his former job as clerk. He also made him controller of the North American postal system. No one disapproved; in the eighteenth century it was customary to appoint relatives to political jobs. But Ben had larger ambitions for his son. He arranged for him to begin studying law with Joseph Galloway, one of Philadelphia’s best younger attorneys and a staunch political ally. He also wrote to friends in England, asking them to register William at the Inns of Court, where the elite of the British legal profession studied the intricacies of common law.

  Meanwhile, William had become a member of Philadelphia’s exclusive Annual Assembly, which staged balls that attracted the wealthiest and most attractive young women in the city. Soon he was in love with Elizabeth Graeme, the vivacious, intelligent daughter of one of the city’s elite families. Their sumptuous country house, Graeme Park, was one of the showplaces of the Middle Colonies. Unfortunately, her pompous father violently opposed the match. Dr. Graeme was not put off by William’s illegitimate birth; he had sired two such “byblows” in his youth. But he did not like Ben’s Pennsylvania politics. Franklin invariably opposed the greedy, self-interested policies of the governors the Penn family appointed to run the colony. Elizabeth tended to side with her father, further complicating matters.

  William soon revealed he was a romantic, eager to play the game of longing sighs and barely restrained passion. He wrote letters to his “dear Tormentor” and thanked her for her “agreeable vexatious [and undoubtedly flirtatious] little billet.” At one point, things grew so heated, they almost eloped. But William still had no serious means of support, and the lovers decided not to risk her father’s wrath. Ben apparently watched the burgeoning romance with bemused interest. His handsome son was enjoying an approach to love and marriage that had been beyond the reach of Ben’s cash-strapped youth. It did not bother him that William was spending his father’s money on fashionable clothes and books such as The True Conduct of People of Quality.10

  Ben’s politics remained strongly populist. He began calling for the dismissal of the heirs of William Penn as the colony’s proprietors. The Penns repeatedly ignored the resolutions of the assembly, and their appointed governors frequently vetoed them. Franklin’s stance made him even more obnoxious to the Graemes.

  The assembly voted to send Franklin to England to plead their case with the British government. He took William along as his secretary, telling him, as an added inducement, that he could complete his law studies in London. Ben may have been hoping to cool the romance with Elizabeth Graeme, but before he departed, William became secretly—and perhaps defiantly—engaged to his dear tormentor.

  Ben urged Deborah to accompany them to Britain. Her response was a vociferous NO. Like many people of the time, she had an obsessive fear of sea voyages. The thought of spending six weeks or two months on a ship with her detested stepson no doubt also played a part in her emphatic refusal. Ben warned her that they might be gone for several years, but Deborah still refused. It was the beginning of the end of their marriage. By this time, Deborah may have sensed that she was still Ben’s wife in name only. No longer a partner in their day-to-day business, she had little or nothing to share with him.

  VII

  Both Ben and William were delighted with London. The imperial capital was twice the size and ten times as wealthy as the city Ben had visited as a teenager in the 1720s. It spread along the north bank of the Thames for three miles, wrapped in sooty smoke that gave it, on cloudy days, an infernal appearance. On the south bank of the river, the town of South-wark was rapidly matching its parent; it would eventually become part of Greater London.

  The warm welcome Ben received from scholars and newspapermen with whom he had corresponded pleased him immensely. Universities gave him honorary degrees and members of the Royal Society, the elite of British science, rushed to shake his hand. Newspapers published his articles. This surge of admiration confirmed Ben’s conviction that England and America were one country, part of the triumphant British empire, which was on its way to ruling the globe. Father and son rented rooms in the house of a charming well-to-do widow, Mrs. Margaret Stevenson, on Craven Street, just off the busy Strand, in the heart of the city. Her household included a pretty teenage daughter, Polly.

  William reveled in London’s “infinite variety” and exulted in accompanying his father to dinners and receptions with “politicians, philosophers and men of business.” Within a few months, his letters to Elizabeth Graeme dwindled to brief scribbles. Elizabeth sent William an enraged letter, breaking their engagement. She accused him of dumping her because of their fathers’ political antagonism. William seems to have felt no more than a tremor of regret. He had enrolled at the Inns of Court and was studying law while working closely with his father in his political war with the Penns.

  Not long after he arrived, Ben fell seriously ill with a cold that seemed to verge on pneumonia. London’s polluted air probably worsened his condition. For eight weeks he wheezed and coughed and often struggled for breath. Mrs. Stevenson nursed him day and night, winning his heartfelt gratitude. William was left in charge of their political operations, and impressed everyone with his energy and intelligence. He represented Ben at Court,
where he made his bow to the king and his courtiers and ministers. When the Penns unleashed hired hacks to smear Franklin and the assembly in the newspapers, William wrote a blazing reply that was printed in three papers and in the prestigious Gentleman’s Magazine. Wealthy publisher William Strahan, Franklin’s closest friend in London, praised William’s “solidity of judgment” and declared that he was one of the most gifted young Americans he had seen in years.

  The admiring Strahan remarked that William had become his father’s “friend, his brother, his intimate, and easy companion.” Over the next few years, this intimacy grew even more intense. Father and son traveled together to Scotland and to France. They visited the home village of the English Franklins and discovered an aged relative who knew Ben’s father before he emigrated. They found a Franklin of the previous generation who was a local leader with an uncanny resemblance to Ben. Their pride in their English heritage expanded exponentially.11

  Unaware of Deborah Franklin’s hatred of William, the jovial Strahan launched a campaign to persuade her to join Ben in London with her daughter, Sarah. Along with enthusiastic descriptions of William’s warm relationship with his father, the publisher mentioned that he had a son around Sarah’s age whom she might marry. He also warned Deborah that the “ladies of London” liked her “amiable” husband as much as his men friends. He described how Mrs. Stevenson had nursed Ben during his “severe cold…with an assiduity, concern and tenderness which perhaps only yourself could equal.” Strahan urged Deborah to risk the Atlantic to protect her “interests.” The printer assured her that Ben was “as faithful to his Joan as any man breathing.” But “who knows what repeated and strong temptation may in time…accomplish?”12

  VIII

  On Craven Street, the first stage of what would become Ben Franklin’s transatlantic divorce was already in progress. If he was not yet Mrs. Stevenson’s London husband, he was moving in that direction. He took over her house, setting up his electrical apparatus and giving demonstrations of his scientific prowess to dozens of friends and acquaintances. He invited people to musical evenings at which he played the harp or violin in a quartet. Then there were his air baths. Every morning Ben rose at dawn, shed his calico bed gown and flannel night trousers, and sat around for an hour totally naked. He did this summer and winter; occasionally he strolled the Stevensons’ secluded garden in the altogether. He was convinced that fresh air was good for his health. Not many landladies would have tolerated such a routine.

  Deborah declined William Strahan’s invitation to London, as her husband knew she would. Groping for a compliment, Ben wrote he was “pleased” with her answer. She had not succumbed to Strahan’s “rhetoric and art”—even though her stubbornness left her three thousand miles away. Ben made no secret of Mrs. Stevenson’s presence in his life. He praised her as “very diligent” when he was “indisposed” but added that he still wished Deborah were with him, along with “my little Sally.” Only “sincere love” inspired a woman to nurse a sick man with “tender attention.” Meanwhile, more and more London friends were treating Ben and Mrs. Stevenson as a couple. They were regularly invited to dinner parties together.

  Ben did everything in his power to reassure Deborah of his continuing affection. He found a Book of Common Prayer in large type that would save her the trouble of wearing spectacles in church. He shipped her thousands of dollars worth of clothes, carpeting, china, silverware, bedding, and tablecloths. The goods arrived by the crate in ship after ship. But when Ben’s sojourn in England reached its third year, Deborah wrote him a plaintive letter, complaining that she was lonely and kept hearing rumors about him enjoying other women. Franklin smoothly assured her that “while I have my senses,” he would “do nothing unworthy of the character of an honest man, and one that loves his family.” This was an enigmatic guarantee, at best. If he and Margaret Stevenson were living as man and wife, as seems probable by this time, she was the last woman in the world who would betray him.13

  Mrs. Stevenson’s fatherless daughter, Polly, soon all but worshipped Franklin. She was a remarkably brainy young woman, far more intellectual than Catherine Ray, and Franklin became her semi-father, teacher, and at times, soul mate. At one point she told him she was inclined to remain single and devote herself to the study of science, but Franklin insisted every woman had a responsibility to have children. At times, he was playfully erotic in his letters to her, pretending they were lovers. These remarks have prompted some scholars to speculate that they conducted a secret affair. However, it is hard to believe Margaret Stevenson would have tolerated a star boarder who seduced her only daughter.14

  Instead, Ben and Mrs. Stevenson both hoped that Polly might fall in love with William Franklin, and vice versa. But the two young people showed no inclination to comply with their elders’ wishes. On the contrary, toward the close of their third year in London, William informed his father that he, too, had found it difficult to control the passions of youth; an affair with an unnamed woman had produced an illegitimate son. Ben could hardly censure him for this lapse; all he could do was insist that William follow his example by giving the boy the family name and taking responsibility for him. They named the child William Temple Franklin, and Mrs. Stevenson found a temporary foster home for him. Ben promised to pay all his expenses.

  William had completed his studies at the Inns of Court and had been “called to the bar.” He was now entitled to practice law in London or Philadelphia. But the Franklins did not depart for home, even though their war with the Penns had ended in a frustrating stalemate. They spent another two years in the imperial capital, pursuing a possibility, faint at first but growing stronger with the passing months, that William could obtain an appointment as an official somewhere in the empire—perhaps as judge of an admiralty court or deputy governor of one of the colonies. This prospect soon became something even more attractive: through a series of improbable firings and refusals, the governorship of a colony opened up.

  Ben went to work; one of his closest friends was an intimate of Lord Bute, tutor and confidant of the new king, George III. The negotiations were conducted in deepest secrecy. By now the Penns hated both Franklins and would have exerted all their influence to block the appointment. Not until the announcement was made in the newspapers did anyone learn that William Franklin was about to become the royal governor of New Jersey. William could justifiably feel that he had played a part in winning this prize; he had demonstrated to his father’s friends that he had the brains and good judgment that were essential to handling this important job.

  IX

  His self-confidence soaring, William proposed to a woman he had been courting for years, Elizabeth Downes, the pretty daughter of a wealthy Barbados sugar planter. She was sweet, dependent, and deeply religious. The contrast between her and outspoken, independent Polly Stevenson suggests that William had not entirely disposed of his inner insecurity about his illegitimate birth. On the other hand, marrying Elizabeth Downes may have been William’s way of declaring a limited independence from his role as his father’s alter ego. Above all Elizabeth was not from Philadelphia, which made her immune to the vicious local politics that had ruined his romance with Elizabeth Graeme, as well as nasty behind-the-back whispers about his illegitimate birth.

  Ben barely managed to conceal his disappointment. He gave the match his “approbation”—he told a friend that Elizabeth was “a very agreeable West Indian lady”—but his enthusiasm was minimal. He had never stopped hoping William would choose Polly Stevenson; their combined brainpower would almost certainly have produced a brood of geniuses. Moreover, Elizabeth was thirty-four, an age at which she was unlikely to have more than one or two children, who might not survive the precarious first years of life. That was a potentially fatal wound to Ben’s dream of founding a famous American family.

  Ben cooperated with William in telling Elizabeth Downes nothing about the existence of William Temple Franklin, but he abruptly decided that it was time for him to go home witho
ut waiting for the wedding ceremony or William’s formal appointment as royal governor. Part of his decision made sense: it was already September, and it would be foolish for a man his age to venture onto the cold, stormy Atlantic in the winter. But there was also more than a hint of disapproval in this departure that a sensitive, intelligent woman like Elizabeth Downes would discern—and remember.

  X

  Five months later, there was only pleasure and pride on Ben’s face when he journeyed to New Jersey to watch William Franklin take office as New Jersey’s royal governor. Ben’s presence helped to promote the cordial welcome William and his British wife received from the colony’s leading citizens, despite vicious efforts by followers of the Penns in Philadelphia to poison people’s minds against “Ben’s bastard,” as they sneeringly called the new governor. William swiftly demonstrated he had inherited his father’s political skills, extracting a generous budget from the assembly and persuading them to vote a small increase in his salary, a rare accomplishment for royal governors.

  Back in Philadelphia, the Penns and their supporters made an all-out effort to break Ben’s power in the assembly. They succeeded in defeating him and his right-hand man, Joseph Galloway, in the annual election. But Ben’s party retained a narrow control of the assembly, and under his guidance, they rammed through twenty-six resolutions condemning the Penns and calling for an end to their government. The legislators climaxed this blast by resolving to send Ben back to England to press their case. Once more he invited Deborah to come with him, and once again she said no.

  At the age of fifty-eight, Franklin began his third crossing of the Atlantic. He had no way of knowing that he was parting with his Plain Country Joan for the last time. Nor could he foresee that the next time he returned to America, his dream of a triumphant British Empire uniting Britain and America would be in ruins. Instead, he would be a leader of a revolution that would inflict terrible wounds on his own heart and the hearts of those he loved.