Franklin Affair

by Jim Lehrer

  “Will you publish a letter of amplification—something like this?” R put a piece of white copy paper on the desk. On it he had written:

  There was an inadvertent omission of full attribution in my recent op-ed piece on Benjamin Franklin. While there was a mention of an earlier essay by Timothy Morton, there could have been other, more specific attribution given to some of the Morton material.

  I very much regret the omission—and I apologize to Mr. Morton.

  R. Raymond Taylor

  Jack read it. “Following the old maxim, ‘The best defense is a good offense,’ ” he said. “Is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary—but whatever pleases you, pleases me. I have something to show you too, by the way.”

  Jack shoved a manila folder toward him. There were five, maybe six, opened letters in it.

  “Our loyal readers have risen up,” said Jack, “to point out that while there is no major memorial to Ben Franklin in D.C., there is, in fact, a marvelous statue of the man in front of the old post office building on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  R had seen the statue a number of times, but it was not the same as a monument on the Mall, which had been his point. He skimmed through the letters. One gave some of the statue’s history—sculpted in marble by Jacques Jouvenal, dedicated on Ben’s birthday, January 17, 1889, by Ben’s granddaughter Mrs. H. W. Emory. . . .

  “It turns out the statue was a gift from Stilson Hutchins, the founder of this newspaper,” said Jack.

  “If you want to include a line about it in my little note, feel free to do so.”

  “Great idea—done.”

  R heaped thanks on Jack Hart and caught the elevator back downstairs, where he hailed a taxi. He considered having the driver go over to Pennsylvania Avenue to look at the Ben statue again but he decided to go directly to Union Station to get on with his day. He arrived in time to catch the 11 A.M. Acela express to Philadelphia.

  A bush bearing gifts was waiting for him at 30th Street Station some ninety minutes later.

  • • •

  “Welcome to Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love,” said Harry Dickinson. “I thought you’d never get here.”

  “How in hell did you know I’d be on this train?” said a most unhappy R. He knew his voice was too loud, but he didn’t care. Leave me alone, Harry Dickinson!

  “I didn’t. This is the third train from Washington I’ve met. I just came down from New York this morning to see you. I haven’t left the train station. Your girl told me you were coming—”

  “She’s not my girl!” yelled R. “She’s a professional historian—a Ph.D., a scholar! She works for Benjamin Franklin University!”

  Harry, bushy as ever, put up his hands as if to say, Shush, please. “OK, OK, I’m sorry. Pipe down. They’ll have the cops on us in a moment.”

  R looked around. People were indeed staring at him. Here in this marvelous high-ceiling cavern of a train station, there were travelers who had stopped to see what the man in the tweed jacket and blue button-down shirt was ranting about. Was he a terrorist? Was he crazy? Why would anybody scream in 30th Street Station? Isn’t this exciting? Or is it scary?

  R rolled his eyes and waved at a couple of the spectators. They began moving again, away from the obviously mentally deranged man.

  “Come with me upstairs to the Amtrak Cub so we can talk,” Harry said. “I bring tidings—tidings of great joy, to coin a phrase.”

  R angrily shook himself away from Harry and took a step toward the door where the taxis lined up. “I don’t want to hear your tidings.”

  “Come with me or I’ll throw a fit and shout, even louder than you. I’ll claim you made a pass at me. They’ll have a Sex Crimes SWAT team in here in a blink, and away we’ll both go to jail—”

  “All right, all right. Five minutes, that’s it,” said R. “Five minutes of tidings and I’m gone.”

  He followed Harry up a flight of stairs on the north side of the lobby, behind and to the right of the ticket windows. There Harry pushed a button, a glass door buzzed open, and they were admitted to a private waiting area for first class and other privileged passengers. An attendant at a desk verified that Harry rated the privilege. The place was quiet and private, with some comfortable chairs and couches, hot coffee and cold drinks, and a few things to read.

  Harry led R to the rear of the long narrow club room to a soundproof conference room that, according to a small sign, was UNOCCUPIED.

  They went inside and closed the dooor.

  “The five-minute clock is running,” said R, sitting down at a six-chair conference table across from Harry.

  “I have in my pocket two pieces of paper. One is a check, the other is a contract,” Harry began. “The check is for half a million dollars, the contract is for a book to be delivered within a year—working title Ben Three.”

  R closed his eyes and tried to digest what he had just heard. Half a million dollars? Did this idiot just say he had a check in his pocket for half a million dollars?

  “A second half million will be paid to you upon final delivery of, and sign-off on, a satisfactory manuscript. In other words, the advance is one million dollars. That puts you up there in the best-seller league of the book-writing world, Dr. R. Raymond Taylor.”

  One million dollars. The idiot said one million dollars. Let’s see, at the level of life I’m now living, thought R, that should last me until the age of eighty—with a lot left over for the kids. Kids? There are no kids. Samantha, do you want to have some kids? Maybe we should talk about that. How old are you, by the way? Isn’t it interesting that I don’t know?

  “No, thanks,” said R. He made a motion to stand.

  “You promised me five minutes. I would argue that you are not selling out Wally at all. For God’s sake, R, if you wrote Ben Two, that means awarding the Pulitzer Prize to Wally was an act of deceit—”

  “If that’s the case, then, goddamn you, Harry, you’re as guilty of the deceit as anyone else!”

  Harry glanced away, but only for a second. “Damn me all you wish. The fact is, Wally would want it corrected.”

  “That is the purest of a pure lie, and you know it. If he had something he wanted corrected he would have done so while he was still alive—or even after his death—in some kind of written statement. Maybe even in his will.”

  Harry was smiling.

  “What’s your problem?” R said, his manner still most hostile.

  “I think you just confirmed that you wrote Ben Two.”

  Until recently, R had not been a violence-prone person. He had never raised a hand or a fist to anybody in his life; not even when he was a kid did he get into fights. His quarterback skills at high school football centered not on brawn or aggressiveness but on his throwing arm, agility, and brains.

  But here he was again, as he had been with Rebecca a few days ago at Elbow’s party, aching to beat the last breath out of somebody—this time, Harry Dickinson.

  Harry must have sensed something along that line. He lowered his voice and said, “Look, R, I understand your emotions on this. Wally was a friend of mine too. He lived a lie and, yes, I helped him live it. But you not only have a right to expose the lie, you have a responsibility to the public and to your profession.”

  R was calming down a bit. Harry’s life was no longer in danger.

  “You’re a man of history, R. You have dedicated your life to the pursuit of the truth. How in hell can you stand by—stand back, really—and let a falsehood of authorship and accomplishment continue?”

  R stood up.

  “What if I blow the whistle on you anyhow?” Harry said. “What if I say publicly that Ben Two, a book I edited, was published and praised and honored under false pretenses? What if I tell the world that Wally Rush, a good and honorable man, did not in fact write Ben Two, and I believe the real author was none other than his longtime assistant, R Taylor?”

  Harry stood and removed two item
s from an inside breast pocket of the dark blue blazer he was wearing. He laid them out on the table between them.

  R didn’t want to glance down but he simply could not stop himself.

  There was a light green Green Tree Publishers check for $500,000, made payable to R. Raymond Taylor. The other item was a sheath of legal-size papers, AUTHOR CONTRACT at the top of the first page.

  R looked but did not touch. “Harry, this is the end of our discussion. Without my confirmation you have nothing. There is no one else who knows anything about what happened with Ben Two. All I will say to you now is that it is not—was not—as simple, as black and white, as you believe.”

  R had spoken softly. The steam was gone from the exchange—from him.

  Harry put the check and the contract back in his pocket. R probably imagined it, but he seemed wilted.

  “My early presidency book is still available if you’d like to make an offer,” R said, at the door to the conference room.

  “I’ll take a pass, but thanks,” said Harry.

  “Why did you go ahead and publish that book under Wally’s name?”

  “It was a superbly written, well-researched book that was clearly going to be a critical and a popular success. That’s my business. I publish such books.”

  “Even if Wally didn’t write it—or so you suspected?”

  “I figured what I only suspected—but didn’t know for sure—wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “Do you realize that in most other businesses you could go to jail for what you did?”

  Harry laughed out loud at the absurdity of such a thing happening in his business.

  • • •

  “Surprise!”

  When Clara Hopkins said this playfully to R the second he stepped inside Gray House, he almost yelled again. The last thing in the world he wanted right now was another surprise. His reaction was annoyance and more—anger.

  But he held his tongue and followed her into Wally’s old study. A standing easel there was covered by a large piece of white cloth that had the appearance of a bedsheet.

  “Here goes,” she said, whisking the cloth away in the ta-da! manner of a TV quiz show prize unveiling.

  There, fully exposed on the easel, was a large piece of heavy posterboard with small portraits across the top. Under each was a column of words and numbers; at the very top in heavy black writing was SEPTEMBER 7, 1788.

  “Ask and you shall receive,” said Clara. R noticed she was still as gorgeous as ever—maybe even more so. She was dressed today in a tailored dark brown suit that showed off her hair, complexion, and eyes. . . .

  She’s a professional historian, a Ph.D., a scholar! R shifted his concentration to what was on the easel.

  Across the top there were five-by-seven pictures of Ben, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and Washington. Underneath was a chronology for each man for that day in large black block letters.

  “Do you want me to run through it for you?” said Clara. She was clearly proud of her work.

  “Please . . . yes, that would be great,” said R, clearly impressed by her work.

  Clara grabbed a two-foot-long silver pointer. She placed the tip on Ben’s portrait, which was a black and white copy of the so-called fur-collar painting done in Paris by Joseph Siffred Duplessis in 1778. Ben liked it so much he refused ever to pose for another, telling all other pleading artists simply to copy the Duplessis.

  “Let’s begin with our man. He was already very sick then, as you know. Gout, stomach pain, intestinal infections—who knows what-all was hurting.”

  She moved the pointer down the information below Ben’s picture.

  “→Awoke in Market Street home in Philadelphia.

  →Lunched at home.

  →Spent afternoon in bed.

  →Doctor visited before dark.

  →Ate dinner in bed.”

  Clara said, in summary, “Ben never left the house all day.”

  “How sure are you of that?”

  “Ninety-five percent.”

  “Why not one hundred?”

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure of my own name.”

  R smiled. This woman really was a professional.

  She moved the pointer to John Adams. He was scowling, per usual.

  With her pointer, she went through his day:

  “→In Quincy, at home until late morning.

  →Had lunch in Boston with old friend Thaddeus Wilson.

  →Returned to Quincy, spent afternoon writing letters.

  →Ate early dinner, was in bed, presumably asleep, by dark.”

  “A typical day for old John, in other words,” said R, trying to hide his delight at what the pattern was so far. “Did he growl at anybody, profess his righteousness to anyone?”

  “The record is silent on that,” said Clara, “but one can only assume that it was a day like any other day and he did one or the other—or both.”

  Alexander Hamilton was next. His usual expression said loud and clear that he was intellectually superior to all humans, most particularly on matters concerning finance and commerce. R believed Hamilton to be right about that. None of the other Founding Fathers, including Ben, were in Hamilton’s league on economics. Jefferson and Madison operated their own farm operations in the red. Some scholars claimed Washington had to marry rich to keep a roof over his head. Ben made a lot of money and was a terrific businessman, but his knowledge of high finance was never on the scale of Hamilton’s. Samantha would have been much wiser to have chosen Hamilton rather than Hancock. R himself briefly considered once trying to do the once-and-for-all book on the duel with Aaron Burr that cost Hamilton his life. Someday, maybe after the early presidency book, he might do it yet.

  Clara went through Hamilton’s September 7, 1788:

  “→In New York City, at his house on Fifth Avenue.

  →Met all day, or much of the day, with various legal clients.

  →No word on lunch or dinner.

  →No record on evening activities.”

  “So he could have left the city?”

  “Yes, but not for long. He was definitely at a meeting the next morning—on the eighth—with several bankers downtown. There are written accounts of the meeting. The discussion was about creating a central federal bank.”

  On to James Madison. There was very little written under his photograph.

  Clara said, “He was a most meticulous man, as you know, R. but for some reason there’s not much about his activities that day. The people who tend to his papers in Charlottesville think it’s most likely he was in Montpelier, at least for part of the day. But they—I—need more time to fill out the rest. The records must be somewhere. We just haven’t found them yet. I will pursue it further.”

  R had always believed that Madison, the tiny man with the giant brain, had been shortchanged by the American Revolution historian community. Maybe, like Ben, his time would eventually come.

  They moved their attention to George Washington. There was a long list of items below his picture, which was a copy-machine replica of the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait.

  “→Spent the night before at Leesburg, Virginia, having ridden there by horseback from Mount Vernon.

  →Rode on west, crossed Shenandoah River at Harpers Ferry, proceeded to Charles Town.

  →Dined as a guest of James Nourse at his home, Piedmont.

  →Spent night two miles down the road at home of brother, Samuel Washington.”

  She turned to face R, the pointer held in front of her like an at-ease baton. “End of presentation, sir.”

  R clapped his hands. Clara bowed, accepting the applause.

  “This really is an impressive performance, Clara,” R said. “Thank you very much.”

  “Now will you say why you asked me to do this?” she said. “Will you please, please, tell me what’s going on?”

  “Sorry, I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “I’m going over to Clymer’s office now.”<
br />
  “Do you want me to call first, to make sure Elbow’s there? I heard . . . somewhere . . . that he may have had travel plans for the day.”

  “I’ll chance it. Thanks.”

  And he was out the door.

  Yes, R wanted to talk to Elbow Clymer. But, more important, he wanted time to consider the message of Clara’s little easel-board presentation.

  There could not possibly have been a meeting of Ben, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and Washington on September 7, 1788!

  So. The whole thing was a hoax, like the Prophecy? Those papers were manufactured and then stuck in the lining of that old cloak to be found someday?

  But who would do something like that? And why?

  Questions. Oh, yes, there were many natural follow-up questions. But what mattered right now was that there had been no Founding Fathers jury of peers gathering on September 7, 1788.

  Hooray! Hooray for Ben! Hooray for Wally!

  TWELVE

  Gray House was five blocks from the BFU administration building where Clymer’s office was located. R had walked only three of those blocks, barely inside the campus, before he stopped and sat down at Deborah Read Franklin Park, the only place on earth named for Ben’s terribly treated and neglected wife. It was a small place with a couple of beds of roses and a few stone benches.

  Even Wally never made an effort to defend the atrocious way Ben treated Deborah. “Like an ugly unwanted stray dog,” was the way Wally once put it. The only thing Ben did for her was agree to take her as his common-law wife after her legal husband, a low-life crook, ran off to the Caribbean to avoid the law. She bore Ben two children, one of whom died in childhood, and stayed in Philadelphia while Ben was living high and well in London and later in Paris. When told that Deborah was dying, Ben didn’t even rouse himself to get on a boat to go home. Wally used to say their letters had all the warmth, feeling, and passion of credit rating reports. If Ben’s conduct toward her bothered him very much he kept such confessions to himself. Maybe Clara was right to see if there was a way to finally give the poor woman her due. . . .

  R took out his cell phone and called Wes Braxton in Eastville.

  “I have a buyer for the papers, Wes,” he said. “Are you in a position to sell?”