Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

  Benjamin Franklin left behind a brother whose paper would slowly fail and whose reputation would eventually be reduced to a tarnished historical footnote. James was doomed by his brother’s sharp pen to be remembered “for the blows his passion too often urged him to bestow upon me.” Indeed, his significance in Franklin’s life is described in a brusque footnote in the Autobiography, written during Franklin’s time as a colonial agent fighting British rule: “I fancy his harsh and tyrannical treatment of me might be a means of impressing me with that aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to me through my whole life.”

  James deserved better. If Franklin learned an “aversion to arbitrary power” from him, it was not merely because of his alleged tyrannical style but because he had set an example by challenging, with bravery and spunk, Boston’s ruling elite. James was the first great fighter for an independent press in America, and he was the most important journalistic influence on his younger brother.

  He was also an important literary influence. Silence Dogood may have been, in Benjamin’s mind, modeled on Addison and Steele, but in fact she more closely resembled, in her down-home vernacular and common-touch perceptions, Abigail Afterwit, Jack Dulman, and the other pseudonymous characters that had been created for the Courant by James.

  Benjamin’s break with his brother was fortunate for his career. As great as it was to be raised in Boston, it would likely have become a constricting town for a free-spirited deist who had not attended Harvard. “I had already made myself a little obnoxious to the governing party,” he later wrote, “and it was likely I might if I stayed soon bring myself into scrapes.” His mockery of religion meant that he was pointed to on the streets “with horror by good people as an infidel or atheist.” All in all, it was a good time for him to leave both his brother and Boston behind.42

  It was a tradition among American pioneers, when their communities became too confining, to strike out for the frontier. But Franklin was a different type of American rebel. The wilderness did not beckon. Instead, he was enticed by the new commercial centers, New York and Philadelphia, that offered the chance to become a self-made success. John Winthrop may have led his Puritan band on an errand into the wilderness; Franklin, on the other hand, was part of a new breed leading an errand into the Market streets.

  Afraid that his brother would try to detain him, Franklin had a friend secretly book him passage on a sloop for New York using the cover story that it was for a boy who needed to sneak away because he “had an intrigue with a girl of bad character” (or, as Franklin put it in an earlier draft, “had got a naughty girl with child”). Selling some of his books to pay for the fare, the 17-year-old Franklin set sail in a fair wind on the evening of Wednesday, September 25, 1723. The following Monday, the New England Courant carried a succinct, slightly sad little ad: “James Franklin, printer in Queen Street, wants a likely lad for an Apprentice.”43

  *See page 495 for thumbnail descriptions of the main characters in this book.

  *See page 503 for a concise chronology of events in this book. Franklin’s birthdate of January 17, 1706, and all dates unless otherwise noted, are according to the Georgian calendar in use today. Until 1752, Britain and her colonies were still using the Julian calendar, which then differed by eleven days. In addition, they considered March 25, rather than January 1, to be the first day of a new year. Thus, under the Old Style calendar of the time, Franklin’s birth was recorded as Sunday, January 6, 1705. Likewise, George Washington was born on February 11, 1731, on the Old Style calendar, but his birthday is now considered to be February 22, 1732.

  Chapter Three

  Journeyman

  Philadelphia and London, 1723–1726

  Keimer’s Shop

  As a young apprentice, Franklin had read a book extolling vegetarianism. He embraced the diet, but not just for moral and health reasons. His main motive was financial: it enabled him to take the money his brother allotted him for food and save half for books. While his coworkers went off for hearty meals, Franklin ate biscuits and raisins and used the time for study, “in which I made the greater progress from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.”1

  But Franklin was a reasonable soul, so wedded to being rational that he became adroit at rationalizing. During his voyage from Boston to New York, when his boat lay becalmed off Block Island, the crew caught and cooked some cod. Franklin at first refused any, until the aroma from the frying pan became too enticing. With droll self-awareness, he later recalled what happened:

  I balanced some time between principle and inclination until I recollected that when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs. “Then,” thought I, “if you eat one another, I don’t see why we may not eat you.” So I dined upon cod very heartily and have since continued to eat as other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet.

  From this he drew a wry, perhaps even a bit cynical, lesson that he expressed as a maxim: “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”2

  Franklin’s rationalism would make him an exemplar of the Enlightenment, the age of reason that flourished in eighteenth-century Europe and America. He had little use for the fervor of the religious age into which he was born, nor for the sublime sentiments of the Romantic period that began budding near the end of his life. But like Voltaire, he was able to poke fun at his own efforts, and that of humanity in general, to be guided by reason. A recurring theme in his autobiography, as well as in his tales and almanacs, was his amusement at man’s ability to rationalize what was convenient.

  At 17, Franklin was physically striking: muscular, barrel-chested, open-faced, and almost six feet tall. He had the happy talent of being at ease in almost any company, from scrappy tradesmen to wealthy merchants, scholars to rogues. His most notable trait was a personal magnetism; he attracted people who wanted to help him. Never shy, and always eager to win friends and patrons, he gregariously exploited this charm.

  On his runaway journey, for example, he met the sole printer in New York, William Bradford, who had published editorials supporting James Franklin’s fight against the “oppressors and bigots” in Boston. Bradford had no job to offer, but he suggested that the young runaway continue on to Philadelphia and seek work with his son Andrew Bradford, who ran the family print shop and weekly newspaper there.

  Franklin arrived at Philadelphia’s Market Street wharf on a Sunday morning ten days after his departure from Boston. In his pocket he had nothing more than a Dutch dollar and about a shilling in copper, the latter of which he gave to the boatmen to pay for his passage. They tried to decline it, because Franklin had helped with the rowing, but he insisted. He also gave away two of the three puffy rolls he bought to a mother and child he had met on the journey. “A man [is] sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty,” he later wrote, “perhaps through fear of being thought to have but little.”3

  From his first moments in Philadelphia, Franklin cared about such appearances. American individualists sometimes boast of not worrying about what others think of them. Franklin, more typically, nurtured his reputation, as a matter of both pride and utility, and he became the country’s first unabashed public relations expert. “I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal,” he later wrote, “but to avoid all appearances of the contrary” (his emphasis). Especially in his early years as a young tradesman, he was, in the words of the critic Jonathan Yardley, “a self-created and self-willed man who moved through life at a calculated pace toward calculated ends.”4

  With a population of two thousand, Philadelphia was then America’s second-largest village after Boston. Envisioned by William Penn as a “green country town,” it featured a well-planned grid of wide streets lined with brick houses. In addition to the original Quakers who had settled there fifty years earlier, the c
ity named for brotherly love had attracted raucous and entrepreneurial German, Scotch, and Irish immigrants who turned it into a lively marketplace filled with shops and taverns. Though its economy was sputtering and most of its streets were dirty and unpaved, the tone set by both the Quakers and subsequent immigrants was appealing to Franklin. They tended to be diligent, unpretentious, friendly, and tolerant, especially compared to the Puritans of Boston.

  The morning after his arrival, rested and better dressed, Franklin called on Andrew Bradford’s shop. There he found not only the young printer but also his father, William, who had come from New York on horseback and made it there faster. Andrew had no immediate work for the runaway, so William brought him around to see the town’s other printer, Samuel Keimer—a testament both to Franklin’s charming ability to enlist patrons and to the peculiar admixture of cooperation and competition so often found among American tradesmen.

  Keimer was a disheveled and quirky man with a motley printing operation. He asked Franklin a few questions, gave him a composing stick to assess his skills, and then promised to employ him as soon as he had more work. Not knowing that William was the father of his competitor, Keimer volubly described his plans for luring away most of Andrew Bradford’s business. Franklin stood by silently, marveling at the elder Bradford’s craftiness. After Bradford left, Franklin recalled, Keimer “was greatly surprised when I told him who the old man was.”

  Even after this inauspicious introduction, Franklin was able to get work from Keimer while he lodged with the younger Bradford. When Keimer finally insisted that he find living quarters that were less of a professional conflict, he fortuitously was able to rent a room from John Read, the father of the young girl who had been so amused by his appearance the day he straggled off the boat. “My chest and clothes being come by this time, I made rather a more respectable appearance in the eyes of Miss Read than I had done when she first happened to see me eating my roll in the street,” he noted.5

  Franklin thought Keimer an “odd fish,” but he enjoyed having sport with him as they shared their love for philosophical debate. Franklin honed the Socratic method he found so useful for winning arguments without antagonizing opponents. He would ask Keimer questions that seemed innocent and tangential but eventually exposed his logical fallacies. Keimer, who was prone to embracing eclectic religious beliefs, was so impressed that he proposed they establish a sect together. Keimer would be in charge of the doctrines, such as not trimming one’s beard, and Franklin would be in charge of defending them. Franklin agreed with one condition: that vegetarianism be part of the creed. The experiment ended after three months when Keimer, ravenous, gave in to temptation and ate an entire roast pig by himself one evening.

  Franklin’s magnetism attracted not only patrons but also friends. With his clever mind, disarming wit, and winning smile, he became a popular member of the town’s coterie of young tradesmen. His clique included three young clerks: Charles Osborne, Joseph Watson, and James Ralph. Ralph was the most literary of the group, a poet convinced both of his own talent and of the need to be self-indulgent in order to be a great artist. Osborne, a critical lad, was jealous and invariably belittled Ralph’s efforts. On one of their long walks by the river, during which the four friends read their work to one another, Ralph had a poem he knew Osborne would criticize. So he got Franklin to read the poem as if it were his own. Osborne, falling for the ruse, heaped praise on it, teaching Franklin a rule of human nature that served him well (with a few exceptions) throughout his career: people are more likely to admire your work if you’re able to keep them from feeling jealous of you.6

  An Unreliable Patron

  The most fateful patron Franklin befriended was Pennsylvania’s effusive governor Sir William Keith, a well-meaning but feckless busybody. They met as a result of a passionate letter Franklin had written to a brother-in-law explaining why he was happy in Philadelphia and had no desire to return to Boston or let his parents know where he was. The relative showed the letter to Governor Keith, who expressed surprise that a missive so eloquent had been written by a lad so young. The governor, who realized that both of the established printers in his province were wretched, decided to seek out Franklin and encourage him.

  When Governor Keith, dressed in all his finery, marched up the street to Keimer’s print shop, the disheveled owner bustled out to greet him. To his surprise, Keith asked to see Franklin, whom he proceeded to lavish with compliments and an invitation to join him for a drink. Keimer, Franklin later noted, “stared like a pig poisoned.”7

  Over fine Madeira at a nearby tavern, Governor Keith offered to help Franklin set up on his own. He would use his influence, Keith promised, to get him the province’s official business and would write Franklin’s father a letter exhorting him to help finance his son. Keith followed up with invitations to dinner, further flattery, and continued encouragement. So, with a fulsome letter from Keith in hand and dreams of a familial reconciliation followed by fame and fortune, Franklin was ready to face his family again. He boarded a ship heading for Boston in April 1724.

  It had been seven months since he had run away, and his parents were not even sure that he was still alive, so they were thrilled by his return and welcomed him warmly. Franklin had not, however, yet learned his lesson about the pitfalls of pride and of provoking jealousy. He sauntered down to the print shop of his jilted brother James, proudly sporting a “genteel new suit,” a fancy watch, and £5 of silver coins bulging his pocket. James looked him up and down, turned on his heels, and silently went back to work.

  Franklin could not refrain from flaunting his new status. As James stewed, he regaled the shop’s young journeymen with tales of his happy life in Philadelphia, spread his silver coins on the table for them to admire, and gave them money to buy drinks. James later told their mother he could never forget nor forgive the offense. “In this, however, he was mistaken,” Franklin recalled.

  His family’s old antagonist Cotton Mather was more receptive, and instructive. He invited young Franklin over, chatted with him in his magnificent library, and let it be known that he forgave him for the barbs that had appeared in the Courant. As they were making their way out, they went through a narrow passage and Mather suddenly warned, “Stoop! Stoop!” Franklin, not understanding the exhortation, bumped his head on a low beam. As was his wont, Mather turned it into a homily: “Let this be a caution to you not always to hold your head so high. Stoop, young man, stoop—as you go through this world—and you’ll miss many hard thumps.” As Franklin later recalled to Mather’s son, “This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me, and I often think of it when I see pride mortified and misfortunes brought upon people by carrying their heads too high.” Although the lesson was a useful counterpoint to his showy visit to his brother’s print shop, he failed to include it in his autobiography.8

  Governor Keith’s letter and proposal surprised Josiah Franklin. But after considering it for a few days, he decided it was imprudent to fund a rather rebellious runaway who was only 18. Though he was proud of the patronage his son had attracted and the industriousness he had shown, Josiah knew that Benjamin was still impudent.

  Seeing no chance of a reconciliation between his two sons, Josiah did give his blessing for Benjamin to return to Philadelphia, with the exhortation “to behave respectfully to the people there…and avoid lampooning and libeling, to which he thought I had too much inclination.” If he was able by “steady industry and prudent parsimony” to save almost enough to open his own shop by the time he was 21, Josiah promised he would help fund the rest.

  Franklin’s old friend John Collins, entranced by his tales, decided to leave Boston as well. But once in Philadelphia, the two teenagers had a falling-out. Collins, academically brighter than Franklin but less disciplined, soon took to drink. He borrowed money from Franklin and began to resent him. One day, when they were boating with friends on the Delaware, Collins refused to row his turn. Others in the boat were willing to let
it pass, but not Franklin, who scuffled with him, grabbed him by the crotch, and threw him overboard. Each time Collins swam up to the boat, Franklin and the others would row it away a few feet more while insisting that he promise to take his turn at the oars. Proud and resentful, Collins never agreed, but they finally allowed him back in. He and Franklin barely spoke after that, and Collins ended up going to Barbados, never repaying the money he had borrowed.

  In the course of a few months, Franklin had learned from four people—James Ralph, James Franklin, Cotton Mather, and John Collins—lessons about rivalry and resentments, pride and modesty. Throughout his life, he would occasionally make enemies, such as the Penn family, and jealous rivals, such as John Adams. But he did so less than most men, especially men so accomplished. A secret to being more revered than resented, he learned, was to display (at least when he could muster the discipline) a self-deprecating humor, unpretentious demeanor, and unaggressive style in conversation.9

  Josiah Franklin’s refusal to fund his son’s printing venture did not dampen Governor Keith’s enthusiasm. “Since he will not set you up, I will do it myself,” he grandly promised. “I am resolved to have a good printer here.” He asked Franklin for a list of what equipment was necessary—Franklin estimated it would cost about £100—and then suggested that Franklin should sail to London so that he could personally pick out the fonts and make contacts. Keith pledged letters of credit to pay for both the equipment and the voyage.10