Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (33 page)

WILLIAM’S FATHER WROTE HIM
a letter, or rather, he pretended to write him a letter; it appeared obvious from the formal style that the composition was in fact a first draft of an autobiography. He claimed he sent it to William “imagining it may be agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life,” and William was forced to admit that it was. Oh, yes, it was, but the real meaning of the letter soon became clear: William’s father wanted to remind him of his humble beginnings and the benefits of the Spartan lifestyle in which his father had been raised. Just the same, William tore into his father’s words, chewing and tasting and swallowing each one before finally spitting them out, but the particular words he was after weren’t there. William was mentioned but a few times, first in 1755 and last in 1757. His mother wasn’t mentioned at all. His father did confess to a youthful affinity for “low women,” despite the “great inconvenience”; was that what William’s mother had been, a “low woman”? Was that all William had ever been, a “great inconvenience”? Almost as disturbing were the passages about his stepmother: “I pitied poor Miss Read’s unfortunate situation,” Benjamin Franklin wrote. “I considered my giddiness and inconstancy when in London as in a great degree the cause of her unhappiness.” And so he assumed a married state with her, “and thus corrected that great erratum as well as I could.” Having recognized the obvious disparity between mother and father, having witnessed the overwhelming resentment of the mother, a new horror began to torture William: Where was he at the time of this “correction”? He must have appeared at around the same time; had he in any way influenced it? Could his father have married this near-illiterate Deborah Read only to give William a proper home? If he had, there was nothing on this earth that William could do to make up to his father for such a sacrifice. And worse, if Deborah Read was the better choice, what must his real mother have been? The old rumors began to take on more verity; William’s father’s silence on his mother’s identity only seemed to prove the case more fully.

William was a bastard, yes; now he must add to it that his mother was likely a whore.

43
Philadelphia, 1763

DEBORAH FRANKLIN PULLED OUT
the packet of her husband’s old letters and began to read them from the beginning again.

LONDON, JULY 27, 1757

My dear Child,

We arrived here well last Night, only a little fatigued with the last Day’s Journey being 70 Miles. I write only this Line, not knowing of any Opportunity to send it. Billy is with me here at Mr. Collinson’s, and presents his Duty to you, and Love to his Sister. My Love to all. I am, my dear Child, Your loving Husband,

B. Franklin

LONDON, NOVEMBER 22, 1757

My dear Child,

I have now before me, your letters of July 17, July 31, August 11, August 21, September 4, September 19, October 1, and October 9. I thank you for writing to me so frequently and fully. 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 sooth me for the present under this painful Absence from my Family and Friends; yet those would not detain me here another Week, if I had no other Inducements, Duty to my Country and Hopes of being able to do it Service . . .

LONDON, DECEMBER 13, 1757

Dear Madam,

Having had the pleasure for several months past, to be personally known to what you will readily allow, to be your better half, having had for many years a very high opinion of Mr. Franklin; I must confess it was very unequal to what I now know his singular merit deserves. 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 . . . Dear madam, I am Your most affectionate, Humble servant,

William Strahan

LONDON, JANUARY 14, 1758

Dear Debby,

Strahan has offered to lay me a considerable wager, that a letter he has wrote to you will bring you immediately over hither; but I tell him I will not pick his pocket; for I am sure there is no inducement strong enough to prevail with you to cross the seas. I would be glad if I could tell you when I expected to be at home, but that is still in the dark; it is possible I may not be able to get away this summer . . . I am, my dear child, Your ever loving husband,

B. Franklin

LONDON, JANUARY 21, 1758

My dear Child,

I begin to think I shall hardly be able to return before this time twelve months . . .

LONDON, JUNE 10, 1758

My dear Child,

I have no Prospect of Returning till next Spring, so you will not expect me. But pray remember to make me as happy as you can, by sending some Pippins for myself and Friends, some of your small Hams, and some Cranberries. Your answer to Mr. Strahan was just what it should be; I was much pleas’d with it . . .

LONDON, MARCH 5, 1760

My dear Child,

Mr. Strahan is very urgent with me to stay in England and prevail with you to remove hither with Sally. I gave him two Reasons why I could not think of removing hither. One, my Affection to Pensilvania, and long established Friendships and other Connections there: the other, your invincible Aversion to crossing the Seas . . .

LONDON, MARCH 28, 1760

My dear Child,

I have now the Pleasure to acquaint you, that our Business draws near a Conclusion, and that in less than a Month we shall have a Hearing, after which I shall be able to fix a Time for my Return . . .

LONDON, JUNE 27, 1760

My dear Child,

I am concern’d that so much Trouble should be given you by idle Reports concerning me. Be satisfied, my dear, that while I have my Senses, and God vouchsafes me his Protection, I shall do nothing unworthy the Character of an honest Man, and one that loves his Family . . .

Deborah pushed the packet of letters back into their box, having received little more satisfaction from the reading the second time—or third or fourth—than she had at the first. Three months had turned to six, to twelve, to two years, to four, and Deborah might have reconsidered braving the seas if she’d only been told her husband should be gone even longer, but that information—or invitation—never came.

THEN ABRUPTLY, IF THE
word
abruptly
could be used five years after the man had first sailed, Benjamin Franklin came home, carrying extra weight, the first wrinkles, an expanded forehead, and clothes much finer than those he’d taken across. There was something different in his speech too—a polish that made him stranger to her than had the altered features or clothes; before, the words were the things that had escaped her—now added to those was this new, strange tone.

Benjamin came in, grinned, and opened his arms wide, lifting a questioning brow as if to say, “Well, here is what I am and what I’m not—are you ready for it again?” At her first glimpse of all the strangeness, Deborah might have said
no,
but at the sight of the open arms she saw that what was important in him was the same; she ran into his arms and the nineteen-year-old Sally came running and hugged them together.

A family again.

DEBORAH FOUND COMFORT IN
Benjamin’s older, looser flesh—it reminded her that she hadn’t aged alone. They found their old, familiar places, more slowly, less violently, perhaps coming to a lesser end, but it was as it should be and no more. Over the coming days Benjamin and Sally played duets on the harpsichord and the new-fangled armonica that Benjamin had shipped home from London; he read aloud to them out of new-fangled books that Sally grasped more quickly than Deborah, but that fact only made her proud. In due time it seemed all Philadelphia came to their door, taking Benjamin off into his old life again, but Deborah was more patient with it this time; he was here.

And then he was gone, this time on a six-month tour of his postal routes. Sally and Deborah were invited to visit William and his new bride in New Jersey, and although Sally went, Deborah elected to stay home. She’d heard enough about the new Georgian house with the fancy white fieldstone facade, the elegant furniture, the visiting artists and high-society Brits whom William now called his friends.

She’d met Elizabeth.

THE POSTAL SURVEY TOOK
up most of that first year, but when Benjamin returned he excited Deborah by ordering construction begun on a new house on Market Street—the first house they would ever own. The happy bustle and commotion of planning and building took up most of the next year; part of Deborah’s joy over the house was the sense of permanence it implied, but she soon discovered that even though a house couldn’t move, a man could.

Two years from the date of his arrival home, Benjamin appeared at the bedroom door with the news as before. London. Again. This time, no mention was made of Deborah’s coming along; how could she, with so much work on the new house yet to be done? But she was worried. William was in America this time, and in his few visits to his father, Deborah had grown concerned. William may have matured into his proper filial duty in his years gone, but that could twist both ways; she heard him talking over his father’s business with an alarmingly proprietary tone. A letter had come, out of which Benjamin had read aloud:

Please tell my mother I am not so very great a distance away if she should require my aid at any time.

With Benjamin gone, Deborah feared William’s interfering hand. But those seven years spent as an unlawful wife had taught Deborah the power of a bit of paper.

Deborah approached her husband. “You’ve gone over the books I’ve kept since you were gone?”

“I have.”

“There’s naught amiss?”

“Naught amiss. My child, you do me proud!”

“As I shall this time you’re gone.”

“I’ve no doubt of it.”

“Should you not write it down, then, so those who might question my authority may read of it in your own hand?” She did not say the name
William.
Benjamin did not. But at the week’s end, Deborah tucked an official document called a
power of attorney
into a desk where she also found William’s next letter, which Benjamin had elected not to read aloud:

As you appear to have found your own reasons for keeping your business in her hands, I will only add here that I am ever your dutiful and grateful son and should the need arise, ready and willing for you to command.

44

ANNE CAME DOWN THE
stairs and stepped into the Penny Pot’s common room. Familiar heads came up and waved or smiled, but Anne had seen a table of new custom—better dressed than the usual Penny Pot crowd—and she began to work her way there. As she moved amongst the tables, returning each greeting with a smile, she remembered her first days at the Penny Pot, and how much—and how little—she’d learned in all the years that had stretched between now and then. Odd that she was in fact thinking about those early years when a general cry went up, and she turned to find Franklin sailing through the door.

Anne hadn’t seen Benjamin Franklin since the New York wharf; she’d returned from that aborted journey and gone straight to the Penny Pot, laying her proposition down in front of John Hewe. Beside the marriage contract there must be another—a will that on John Hewe’s death would bequeath the Penny Pot to Anne. Hewe had made a brief, weak argument.

“The Pot’s been promised to my grandson.”

Anne had looked around the tavern. “And where is he?”

“Williamsburg.”

“Ah,” Anne had answered. “And yet here I am.”

In the end the two contracts were drawn and signed, and Anne had given Hewe three years of hard work both above stairs and below, a faithful wife to him while he lived, washing and feeding him in his last illness, holding his hand while he died. Now the Penny Pot belonged to Anne alone. It was true that after John Hewe died, she often lay awake in an uneasy, exhausted state, pondering the many things she might have forgotten to do . . . or say. Then there were those nights when she woke thinking of William, and whether in her life she would ever see him again, and what she might say were she to do so. She knew he’d returned from London with an English wife and an English appointment as royal governor of New Jersey, that when he visited Philadelphia he didn’t stay at his parents’ home. She knew all this and she knew nothing; she hadn’t laid eyes on him in more than seven years.

There were times too when Anne had thought of Franklin. She’d read in the papers of his receiving this or that honorary degree from the most respected European institutions; she read his oft-quoted essay, “A Defense of Americans,” first printed in the
London Chronicle
and later reprinted in the
Pennsylvania Gazette;
she followed every report of his scientific innovations—watertight compartments for ships, iceberg watches, a phonetic alphabet—and read with amusement that he was reportedly climbing every tall building in Europe and fixing them with his electrical “points.”

Anne also listened to every report of Franklin’s pending return that never came true. As she followed these London doings via newspaper and rumor, she gave passing thought to what kind of witness she might have been to all of it, even what possible influence she might have had, but she never regretted her last decision regarding him, no matter how many times she might question an earlier few.

And now here was Franklin, home again, but by the time he strolled into the Penny Pot, he’d in fact been home for some time, still filling the papers and the rumor mill by making his own news. As trouble brewed between the white settlers and the Indians on the western front, as rumors of a planned slaughter of Indians circulated, he wrote a pamphlet defending the six Indian nations, joining forces with the Quakers at last and forming six militia companies to provide for the tribes’ protection.