Early American Literature

With his origins both in Boston and in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin appears an anomalous being, with scholars continually trying to provide him with contexts. A figure both convivial and independent, he has [End Page 779] been at risk of shrinking to the scale of such contemporaries as Rev. William Smith, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Joseph Breintnall, or Mather Byles. Franklin's biographers from the times of James Parton in 1864 have struggled to balance respect for his accomplishment with acknowledgment of his various errata.

So it is just the recognizably human aspect of Franklin that has been missing from treatments of him. And that critical failing may appear the more paradoxical as his own Autobiography provides considerable detail about his own shortcomings. But the errata he confesses do not amount to anything like the grounds for real feelings of hostility toward him—quitting his abusive older brother, failing to pay money due to someone named Vernon promptly, even making advances to his bigamous buddy James Ralph's current girlfriend when Ralph is out of town. The Autobiography does not in general reveal second thoughts or vulnerabilities such as the rest of us know. As with various other privileged white Americans of the eighteenth century, his thinking about slavery evolved over time from the period when he himself owned people, but he does not report the evolution of his views. It would be hard to find a writer more focused on purposive behavior. As for his revelation of himself, he appears to follow the advice offered by Poor Richard: "Let all men know thee. But no man know thee thoroughly." So those who search out Franklin's inner life must search for it in places where it might be hidden.

At only one point in his Autobiography does he acknowledge the existence of internal energies beyond the scope of his managerial acumen. Following a failed negotiation for a marriage with a Miss Godfrey, he mentions the "hard-to-be-govern'd Passion of Youth [that had] hurried me frequently into Intrigues with low Women that fell in my Way, which were attended with some Expence & great Inconvenience, besides a continual Risque to my Health by a Distemper which of all Things I dreaded, tho' by great good Luck I escaped it" (Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. Ormond Seavey [Oxford UP, 2009], 70). Following this characterization of his passional life, he describes his rapprochement with Deborah Read, formerly his early love interest but left behind in Philadelphia as he left for an interlude in London from 1724 to 1726. In the interim she had wedded a possibly bigamous potter named Rogers who was no longer on the scene. Benjamin admits that his former behavior had precipitated her luckless [End Page 780] venture into matrimony. At this point he saw no prospect for gaining a dowry. The language by which he reports his connection made to her resumes the notes of purposive action in the Autobiography: "None of the Inconveniencies happened that we apprehended, she prov'd a good & faithful Helpmate, assisted me much by attending the Shop, we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavour'd to make each other happy.—Thus I corrected that great Erratum as well as I could" (71). What great erratum he refers to appears perhaps ambiguous, but it could well be either his previous abandonment of her or his so-called "Intrigues with low Women that fell in [his] way" (70).

Franklin's proponents tiptoe delicately past this passage, with all of its lacunae and evasions. Readers might consult the late J. A. Leo Lemay's biography, which suggests by contrast that it had been Deborah Read who abandoned Benjamin in 1725 despite his admission to the contrary; Lemay based that surmise on the times that vessels departed London for Philadelphia possibly carrying his one letter to her (The Life of Benjamin Franklin [U of Pennsylvania P, 2006], 265–66...