by Jim Lehrer
In both marriages, R had made his own major contributions to their failure. That was mostly because of his own inability to remember he was married when the young coeds and Clara Hopkinses of his work world made themselves obviously available. Samantha, within days of meeting R at that Jefferson symposisum, had learned through the small Early American historian grapevine of R’s two soured marriages and of his reputation. At the time she had said often that, based on his record, she didn’t trust him but she couldn’t resist him.
She didn’t say it now, of course. They had moved past all that to Why not have the wedding in Wichita? On the other hand, Samantha now had more friends here on the East Coast than she did in Kansas. . . .
R was barely listening. Since reading Clara’s e-mail, his mind had been slamming with thoughts about Ben and the cloak and the papers, the murder and child sex charges, and the extraordinary trial in a Pennsylvania farmhouse. He felt a sudden intense need to get away—not just from Washington and this town house but the Ben papers and all of the rest. He needed to be in another location, another space, another environment to work everything out.
He sprang straight up in bed.
“Craven Street!” he announced.
“What about it?” Samantha responded with some alarm. “I’m not about to get married in an old house in London—”
“No, no. Not that. Let’s go there.”
“On our honeymoon? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Tomorrow. Let’s go tomorrow. We’ll stay at the Savoy, around the corner. Just for a day or two.”
Samantha was now also sitting straight up.
“Take your laptop,” R said. “We’ll work on your writing problem. I’ll take some stuff I need to do too.”
“What stuff? You already did that Ben-at-Craven-Street book, remember? You told me you spent days, weeks there. Now it’s about the early presidency. Repeat after me: ‘I am now working on the early presidency, none of which happened anywhere near Craven Street.’ ”
He leaped out of bed.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To the computer. I’ll see what Expedia and the others have for tomorrow. Who knows, last-minute can sometimes turn up very cheap airline fares. Same for the Savoy.”
He had stopped at the door.
“Aren’t you even going to ask if I want to go—if I will go?” Samantha said.
“I’m sorry—”
“I have to go back up to Pennsylvania and give that asshole John Hancock one more try. I really do. Maybe I can get him into a conversation—”
“I understand.”
She sighed. In a soft, quiet voice, she asked, “Why, R? Why, dearest one of all, do you want to go back to Craven Steet?”
“To talk to Ben—again.”
TEN
R hoped it was late enough in the morning for Ben’s house to be open. He had taken the early overnight United flight from Washington Dulles, arriving at London Heathrow just after 6:30 A.M. But with the deplaning, waiting for luggage, getting a taxi ride to the West End and all the rest, it was now almost ten o’clock. His hotel room on the seventh floor of the Savoy, a so-called deluxe bedroom he booked through an Internet discounter for $375 a night, had fortunately been ready early. It had a king-sized bed, a marble-floored bathroom and 24-hour butler service, none of which R had paid any attention to before heading out the door for the elevator.
In less than five minutes he was downstairs, through the lobby, and out onto the Strand, the busy avenue of commerce and show business that parallels a curvaceous bump in the Thames. It serves as a kind of man-made dividing line between the Embankment leading southward down to the river and Covent Garden and the major West End theater district to the north.
R turned left, went five blocks, and made another left at a side alley to Craven Street. It was a cool gray London morning and he was still in the blue blazer, open-collared cotton sport shirt, and khaki chinos he had worn on the plane. But he was too excited to notice whether he was hot or cold.
There was the house, 36 Craven Street, on the left side of the street. Of all the places Ben had lived during his long and illustrious life, including another house here on Craven Street, this was the only one that still survived.
The restoration work on the outside had clearly been completed. The narrow three-story Georgian brick town house looked fixed—gentrified—as did those around it. The last time R had been here there was still scaffolding on the outside and a mess within. An organization of mixed British and American sponsorship had raised the money and the energy to bring 36 Craven Street back to what it was when Ben lived there. The plans were for tours, archives, study centers. They already staged seminars and other functions and put out a publication called The CravenStreet Gazette patterned after a similar fun paper Ben published when he lived here. Both Wally and R had participated in fund-raising and various educational events. R had also joined the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House and had contributed $500 a year for the last five years.
The place looked absolutely perfect from the outside. There were the three lines on a 24-by-16-inch brass plaque:
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
(1706–1790)
LIVED HERE
There was fresh black paint on the iron railings around the lower outside steps to the basement entrance and the alcove window on the main floor above. That was the window of the parlor where Ben often took his strange air baths, as well as entertaining, reading, and observing the passing people, animals, and conveyances below on Craven Street.
R now did as Ben did; he looked down toward the Thames.
In a peculiar mind flip, R’s thoughts went not to the real history of this street, which he knew so well from his own book’s research. They jumped instead to the six Benjamin Franklin mystery novels written in the last few years by Robert Lee Hall, Benjamin Franklin Takes the Case being the first. Totally made up, of course, each is told in first-person mode by Nicolas Handy, Ben’s fictional twelve-year-old illegitimate son. Nick serves as a kind of stenographer for the great man, and it is Nick’s written records of Ben’s excursions into solving murders and other dastardly London crimes that, according to the fictional preface, surfaced in 1987 among the papers of a Nick Handy descendant.
Art imitating life, truth told only in fiction, and similar clichés were foremost in R’s thoughts at the moment. The possible parallels, real or imagined, between Nick Handy’s stories and those in the twelve Eastville papers were inescapable. And possibly meaningless. And irrelevant. And stupid. Unless . . .
But it all seeped into R’s mind nevertheless, as did what Nick said about Craven Street in one of the books. “The street was a pleasant one, with much rattling traffic.” Ben’s house was “part of a row of brick terrace houses sloping gently toward a timber yard by the Thames” fifty yards away. On the river were “rowboats and wherries” along with fishermen with nets on “the gray-green waters.”
Craven Street was a piece of real history, beyond the fact that Ben once lived here. There were some thirty structures that came right up to the sidewalks on both sides of the street. The timber yard at the end of Craven Street was long gone. Now there was a tiny park and then Embankment Road, a major four-lane thoroughfare that followed the course of the Thames in both directions for several miles. Craven Street itself, now paved and marked neatly for permit parking only, was mostly dirt in Ben’s time. Ben’s carriage, driven by Peter, his freed-slave servant, often threw up dust or mud as it sped off on one of Ben’s many diplomatic, and social—or detective—missions. R knew this from the scores of historicial resources he plumbed in researching his own book about Franklin in London.
“You had quite a life here, Ben,” R said. Without thinking he spoke the words out loud. Then he looked around to see if anyone could have heard him and decided a nut was loose this morning.
There were only two or three people nearby, well-dressed men in suits and ties with umbrellas and briefcases, seemingly on their way to
the tube or to offices. None showed any sign of having seen or heard something unusual. Did unshaven Americans in rumpled clothes often come here to Craven Street in the morning to speak aloud to Benjamin Franklin?
The first time R visited Craven Street was with Maggie twelve years ago, while on a European summer vacation. They came at Wally’s strong urging, on the grounds that this was where Ben had lived for fifteen years—except for one brief break, almost continuously from 1757 to 1775—during a most important time in his life. To know Ben, you had to know Craven Street, Wally said. That initial trip led to seven more and to R’s writing Franklin at Craven Street.
The book told the story of how Ben was here officially as the representative to His Majesty’s government of Pennsylvania and eventually of other American colonies. His original purpose was to persuade the King and Parliament—anybody—to force the greedy descendants of the great William Penn, technically the owners of Pennsylvania, to submit to taxation just like all other citizens of the colony. Ben failed at that specific task, an outcome that left him and the Penns bitter enemies for life. But in the process, he came to represent to most Britons what was both good and bad about the rambunctious and ultimately rebellious American colonies. R’s book also touched on Ben’s personal life, which included his scientific experiments, social escapades, and intellectual pursuits.
Ben never owned the place. He was a boarder of Mrs. Margaret Stevenson, a widow who, with her daughter Polly, provided room, food and companionship, and eventually love and devotion for Ben. But there was no hanky-panky that R and other serious Ben scholars ever bought. Ben was indeed an appreciator of women, but he didn’t manifest his appreciation with each in the same way. Polly Stevenson was eighteen when Ben first came to live on Craven Street with her and her mother. There is no recorded allegation, much less a confirmation, that Ben ever even made a pass at her. Theirs was a father-daughter relationship.
“Tell me about Melissa Anne Harrison, Ben,” R said aloud, his eyes now on the parlor windows.
“It’s open only occasionally for visitors, I rather think, sir,” somebody said. The somebody was a male with a British accent. R, startled, turned to see a man in his late thirties standing next to him, also looking across the street at 36 Craven Street. He was in a dark-blue striped suit, white spread-collar shirt, and dark-blue-and-white polka-dot tie, an umbrella in one hand, a leather briefcase in the other.
“Thank you . . . right, I know. Thank you,” R mumbled.
“Practicing your questions, I guess, then?” said the man, lifting his umbrella in a sign of adieu as he walked on.
R nodded and raised his right hand to give a wave to the man but stopped before doing so.
Instead, he waited another few seconds and walked across the street to the front door of 36 Craven Street.
It was time to get on with it.
• • •
A young woman answered R’s knock. She appeared to be less than thirty, probably an American.
“Good morning,” said R. He was set to go on immediately with a short spiel of introduction but she interrupted him.
“I am so sorry, sir, but we are not yet prepared to handle drop-in visitors,” she said with a pleasant smile and an accent that R placed as Midwest, probably Chicago.
“I’m R Taylor—”
“The R Taylor?”
“Well, I guess—”
“Yes! You’re R Taylor! Oh, my God!” The woman threw open the door. “I can’t believe it’s you!”
If R hadn’t known better, he would have thought he was a rock star.
It seemed for a split second that she might actually grab him. But no. She stepped aside, and he went through the door into the front hallway.
“Franklin at Craven Street is my single most favorite book about Dr. Franklin,” bubbled this most incredible young person—possibly, R thought at that moment, his single most favorite young person in the whole world. “The stories you told about that man and this house, and the way you told them—well, they are truly superb. I loved Ben and Billy too. You’re a beautiful writer, Dr. Taylor.”
She extended her right hand to him. He wanted to devour it.
You are a beautiful person, young lady. You are an intelligent, discerning, brilliant human being—among the very finest of your species.
That’s what he thought. “Thank you, so much,” was what he said. “You have certainly made my day.”
Closer up now, he saw that her dark-blond hair was too long, her nose was slightly too large, and her skin was too rough, and as she escorted him away from the door he noticed that both her rear and her legs were slightly on the bulky and bowed side. But none of that mattered. Her beauty was in her mind, her judgment. Oh, yes. She had just provided for R an experience that seldom happens to historians and only occasionally to writers of any kind of books. John Grisham might get this treatment at a lawyers’ convention, but that’s about it.
Stephanie Thornton. That’s what she now said her name was. She said it nervously, awkwardly.
She also quickly explained that the director, the curator, and the other staff members were away in Bath at a historical properties meeting. Only she and some of the restoration craftsmen were present.
“Everyone is going to be so upset that they missed you,” she said.
“All I really need is to see the parlor. I understand the restoration there is the farthest along,” R said, when she finally asked why he had come.
She made a sound that closely resembled that of a purring kitten.
“You’re right about the parlor,” she said. “We’ve already put furniture in there, so it’s pretty much back the way it was when Dr. Franklin lived here.”
She offered to take him through the entire house, but he declined. He had already been in every corner of the place, including the third floor, where, in Ben’s time, Peter and the other servants slept, and to the second floor, where the two Stevenson women had their bedrooms. Ben’s bedroom and the room he used for his scientific experiments were on the main floor behind the parlor.
They were actually standing at the entrance to the parlor now.
Stephanie’s face lost some of its buoyancy. She clearly wanted to do something for him, to show him more.
“The basement,” he said. “Take me to the basement, where they found the bones.”
Once again, she appeared to be on the verge of grabbing him. But she resisted and said, “Follow me.” The woman seemed truly excited.
The steps down were narrow, still under repair but not dangerous.
At the bottom, immediately in front of where the steps ended, was the kitchen.
“That’s where Mrs. Stevenson prepared those marvelous meals for Dr. Franklin, and his son, William, and the many, many visitors of importance who came to this house.”
R only smiled, and she led him to the basement room where the bones were found.
“I assume you know the whole story, Dr. Taylor?” she asked, and continued without waiting for an answer. “It was about three years ago. They were doing some archaeological excavation and—lo and behold!—they came across some bones buried belowground here in the cellar.”
Yes, young lady, thank you. R had followed the story closely. The local coroner of Westminster determined the bones to be from at least ten different people, all of eighteenth-century vintage. There was some initial concern and mischief over how they might be connected to Ben, but the mystery was quickly solved. A doctor named William Hewson married Polly Stevenson in 1770 and came to live at 36 Craven Street. He set up an anatomy laboratory in the basement, where he taught medical students how to cut up cadavers. The modern-day investigators concluded that Hewson, rather than throwing out the remnants of his work, simply buried them on the premises. One of the grocery store tabloids in the United States had run a full-page story under the headline:
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN SHOCKER!
He was a Founding Father, a signer of
the Declaration of Independence
—AND A SERIAL KILLER!
Nobody else picked up on that nonsense, and the episode moved quickly to focus on the history of surgery in Britain in the eighteenth century.
Stephanie pointed toward a spot in the corner, now covered with loose boards. “That’s where the bones were found,” she said. “Some irresponsible people went as far as to suggest the bones were evidence that Dr. Franklin might have been involved in murder. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous?”
R said he couldn’t.
They went back upstairs, and Stephanie left him in the parlor, after R said he’d appreciate some time to simply sit there by himself.
• • •
“It’s me, R Taylor, Dr. Franklin. Do you remember me?”
Ben said nothing.
There he sat between two of the parlor windows in a high-back Windsor chair covered in dark red fabric.
He was naked.
His legs were crossed, but otherwise only his eyes were unexposed. He was wearing a pair of silver-rimmed bifocals—Franklin Splits, they were called by most people after his death, in the mistaken belief that he had invented them rather than simply made them popular.
His was a physique of bulges. Some were made by muscles in his huge arms and hands and in the calves and thighs of his legs, but others—in his hefty midsection, breasts, and under his chin—were most likely fat. What else could be expected of a man already seventy years old, particularly one who enjoyed few things more than a good meal here at Craven Street or elsewhere with people who shared his curiosities and interests.
I was about to take an air bath. They are far superior to water baths, in my opinion. My use of them sometimes sets the ladies of Craven Street all a-twitter, but such is the price one pays for cleansing oneself one’s own way. I would prefer they be set a-glitter. Alas, that is no longer to be.
R was sitting on the floor directly across the room. Ben and his air baths were part of the Ben mythology, a part, like so many others, that was based on fact. R knew Ben often began his days, no matter the temperature, standing at one of these parlor windows bathing his body in the cold morning air. Mrs. Stevenson suggested that he halt the practice in the name of modesty but to no avail.
