LITMIR.BIZ

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the Elysian Fields. There is every reason to believe that Franklin's marriage vow was never dishonored during Deborah's life, lax as his conduct was before his marriage and lax as his diction at least was after her death. In the Diary from which we have already quoted quite liberally, Fisher, after narrating the extraordinary manner in which Deborah bewailed the troubles of her "Pappy," observes, "Mr. Franklin's moral character is good, and he and Mrs. Franklin live irreproachably as man and wife." Franklin's loyalty to his wife is also evidenced by a letter from Strahan to Deborah in which he uses these words:

      For my own part, I never saw a man who was, in every respect, so perfectly agreeable to me. Some are amiable in one view, some in another, he in all. Now Madam, as I know the ladies here consider him in exactly the same light I do, upon my word I think you should come over, with all convenient speed, to look after your interest; not but that I think him as faithful to his Joan as any man breathing; but who knows what repeated and strong temptation may in time, and while he is at so great a distance from you, accomplish?

      This interrogatory was, perhaps, the rhetorical stroke upon which Strahan relied to give the coup de grâce to Mrs. Franklin's abhorrence of the sea. It was certainly calculated to set a jealous-minded wife to thinking. But it seems to have had as little effect upon Deborah as the other artifices of this masterly letter. The terms "his Joan" in it were doubtless suggested by Franklin's song, My Plain Country Joan, one verse of which, as good, or rather as bad, as the rest, was as follows:

      "Some faults we have all, and so has my Joan,

       But then they're exceedingly small;

       And, now I am used, they are like my own,

       I scarcely can see 'em at all,

       My dear friends,

       I scarcely can see 'em at all."

      Another indication of the marital fidelity of which Strahan speaks is found in a letter from Franklin to Deborah after his second return from England in which he said: "I approve of your opening all my English Letters, as it must give you Pleasure to see that People who knew me there so long and so intimately, retain so sincere a Regard for me." But it would be grossly unjust to Franklin to measure the degree of his attachment to his Joan by the fact merely that he preserved inviolate the nuptial pledge which a man of honor can fairly be expected as a matter of course to observe scrupulously. Not only the lines just quoted by us but the general character of his married life demonstrates that the only thing that he ever regretted about his intercourse with Deborah was that his own censurable conduct should have made her for a time the wife of anyone but himself.

      In his correspondence with his friend Catherine Ray, there are two pleasing references to Deborah.

      Mrs. Franklin [one reads] was very proud, that a young lady should have so much regard for her old husband, as to send him such a present (a cheese). We talk of you every time it comes to table. She is sure you are a sensible girl, and a notable housewife, and talks of bequeathing me to you as a legacy; but I ought to wish you a better, and hope she will live these hundred years; for we are grown old together, and if she has any faults, I am so used to 'em that I don't perceive 'em; as the song says [and then, after quoting from his Plain Country Joan the stanza which we have quoted, he adds:]. Indeed, I begin to think she has none, as I think of you. And since she is willing I should love you, as much as you are willing to be loved by me, let us join in wishing the old lady a long life and a happy.

      The other reference to Deborah occurs in a letter to Miss Ray, written after Franklin's return from a recent visit to New England, in which he describes his feelings before reaching Philadelphia. "As I drew nearer," he said, "I found the attraction stronger and stronger. My diligence and speed increased with my impatience. I drove on violently, and made such long stretches, that a very few days brought me to my own house, and to the arms of my good old wife and children."

      It is to Franklin's own letters to his wife, however, that we must resort to appreciate how fully he reciprocated her affection. Illiterate as her letters were, they were so full of interest to him that he seems to have re-read as well as read them. In one letter to her, for example, after his arrival in England in 1757, he tells her, "I have now gone through all your agreeable letters, which give me fresh pleasure every time I read them." And that he was quick to feel the dearth of such letters we have testimony in the form of a playful postscript to one of his letters to her of the preceding year when he was at Easton, Pennsylvania. The special messenger, he said, that had been dispatched to Philadelphia with a letter from him to her, as well as letters from other persons to their wives and sweethearts, had returned "without a scrap for poor us."

      The messenger says [he continues] he left the letters at your house, and saw you afterwards at Mr. Duché's, and told you when he would go, and that he lodged at Honey's, next door to you, and yet you did not write; so let Goody Smith (a favorite servant of theirs) give one more just judgment, and say what should be done to you. I think I won't tell you that we are well, nor that we expect to return about the middle of the week, nor will I send you a word of news; that's poz.

      The letter ends, "I am your loving husband"; and then comes the postscript: "I have scratched out the loving words, being writ in haste by mistake, when I forgot I was angry."

      His letters to her bear all the tokens of conjugal love and of a deep, tranquil domestic spirit. At times, he addresses her as "My Dear Debby," and once as "My Dear Love," but habitually as "My Dear Child." This was the form of address in the first of his published letters to her dated December 27, 1755, and in his last, dated July 22, 1774. "I am, dear girl, your loving husband," "I am, my dear Debby, your ever loving husband," are among the forms of expression with which he concludes. The topics of his letters are almost wholly personal or domestic. They illustrate very strikingly how little dependent upon intellectual congeniality married happiness is, provided that there is a mutual sense of duty, mutual respect and a real community of domestic interests.

      In one of his London letters, he informs her that another French translation of his book had just been published, with a print of himself prefixed, which, though a copy of that by Chamberlin, had so French a countenance that she would take him for one of that lively nation. "I think you do not mind such things," he added, "or I would send you one."[18] To politics he rarely refers except to reassure her when uneasiness had been created in her mind by one of the reckless partisan accusations which husbands in public life soon learn to rate at their real value but their wives never do. "I am concern'd that so much Trouble should be given you by idle Reports concerning me," he says on one occasion. "Be satisfied, my dear, that while I have my Senses, and God vouchsafes me this Protection, I shall do nothing unworthy the Character of an honest Man, and one that loves his Family."

      As a rule his letters to Deborah have little to say about the larger world in which he moved when he was in England. If he refers to the Royal Family, it is only to mention that the Queen had just been delivered of another Prince, the eighth child, and that there were now six princes and two princesses, all lovely children. After the repeal of the Stamp Act lifted the embargo laid by patriotic Americans on importations of clothing from England, he wrote to Deborah that he was willing that she should have a new gown, and that he had sent her fourteen yards of Pompadour satin. He had told Parliament, he stated, that, before the old clothes of the Americans were worn out, they might have new ones of their own making. "And, indeed," he added, "if they had all as many old Cloathes as your old Man has, that would not be very unlikely, for I think you and George reckon'd when I was last at home at least 20 pair of old Breeches." To his own fame and the social attentions which he received from distinguished men abroad he makes only the most meagre allusion.

      The agreeable conversation I meet with among men of learning, and the notice taken of me by persons of distinction, are the principal things that soothe me for the present, under this painful absence from my family and friends. Yet those would not keep me here another week, if I had not other inducements; duty to my country, and hopes of being able to do it service.

      Thus he wrote to his wife about four months after he arrived in England in 1757. A few weeks later, he said:

      I begin to think I shall hardly be able to return before this time twelve months. I am for doing effectually what I came about; and I find it requires both time

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