Jesse Lemisch: Benjamin Franklin WAS a "distant... spouse"
Alan Houston, a Political Science professor at the University of California – San Diego has uncovered some Franklin materials, including a letter from Franklin to his wife, Deborah. (This and the following concerning Houston appeared on the Chronicle of Higher Education website, April 24: http://chronicle.com.) In this letter, Franklin addresses Deborah as “My dear child,” and concludes, “Write me by every Opportunity, I long to be with you, being, as ever, Your loving husband.”)
The Chronicle describes Houston’s interpretation: “[the above] is evidence that Franklin was not as inattentive and distant a spouse as some recent biographers have made him out to be, ‘It’s a nice reminder that this man, too, is more complex than we sometimes allow,’ he said.”
Complex indeed. The material quoted was a standard formula in Franklin’s letters to Deborah in a slightly later period, including during the last 17 years of her life, 15 of which he spent in England, admittedly doing Great Things, while also building an international career and reputation, and having an affair with his London landlady, all the while promising his imminent return to Philadelphia and sometimes cruelly chastising Deborah for what he took to be her mishandling of Franklin Enterprises back in Philadelphia. She longed for his return, writing him poignant illiterate letters (Word rebels against her spelling) until her death in 1774. (See “Deborah’s Last, Lonely Years,” in Lemisch, ed., Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings (New York: Signet Classic [now Penguin] 1961 and following), 300-307.)
A sampling from Benjamin’s side of the correspondence:
”My Dear Child
… some melancholy Humor you happened… to be in… the large Sums you have received… I cannot spare the Cash… As you ask me, I can assure you, that I really do intend, God willing, to return in the Summer [delayed seven years longer].. as ever, your affectionate Husband
… you never have sent me any Account of your expenses, and think yourself ill-used if I desire it… you were not very attentive to Money-matters in your best Days, and I apprehend that your Memory is too much impair’d for the Management of unlimited Sums, without Danger of injuring the future Fortune of your Daughter and Grandson… I do not like your going about among my Friends to borrow Money… If what you receive is really insufficient for your support satisfy me by Accounts that it is so”
Deborah to Benjamin:
“distresed att your staying so much longer… so verey lonley that I had got into verey low state and got into so unhapey a way that I cold not sleep… I lost all my memery I cold not tell aney thing but stayed all day but very sleepey… did loos my apeytite and loos my memery… I have had one fitt of the head ake… I was in hopes that a packet… wold in forme when you when you intend to returne agen to your one home… I cont write to you as I am so very unfit to expres my selef and not a bell to due as I yousd for that illness I hed was a polsey… my memery failes me… verey low sperreted… it is verey trubl sume to tell… I don’t make aney complaint to you”
Five days after Deborah’s death in 1774, their son William wrote to Benjamin “I heartily wish you had happened to come over in the fall, as I think her disappointment in that respect prayed a good deal on her spirits.”
The problem about all this is not so much that Franklin stayed away – in some sense he was making a revolution – but that he kept lying about coming back, while abusing his declining wife. This doesn’t fit with Houston’s benign picture of him.
The Chronicle describes Houston’s interpretation: “[the above] is evidence that Franklin was not as inattentive and distant a spouse as some recent biographers have made him out to be, ‘It’s a nice reminder that this man, too, is more complex than we sometimes allow,’ he said.”
Complex indeed. The material quoted was a standard formula in Franklin’s letters to Deborah in a slightly later period, including during the last 17 years of her life, 15 of which he spent in England, admittedly doing Great Things, while also building an international career and reputation, and having an affair with his London landlady, all the while promising his imminent return to Philadelphia and sometimes cruelly chastising Deborah for what he took to be her mishandling of Franklin Enterprises back in Philadelphia. She longed for his return, writing him poignant illiterate letters (Word rebels against her spelling) until her death in 1774. (See “Deborah’s Last, Lonely Years,” in Lemisch, ed., Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings (New York: Signet Classic [now Penguin] 1961 and following), 300-307.)
A sampling from Benjamin’s side of the correspondence:
”My Dear Child
… some melancholy Humor you happened… to be in… the large Sums you have received… I cannot spare the Cash… As you ask me, I can assure you, that I really do intend, God willing, to return in the Summer [delayed seven years longer].. as ever, your affectionate Husband
… you never have sent me any Account of your expenses, and think yourself ill-used if I desire it… you were not very attentive to Money-matters in your best Days, and I apprehend that your Memory is too much impair’d for the Management of unlimited Sums, without Danger of injuring the future Fortune of your Daughter and Grandson… I do not like your going about among my Friends to borrow Money… If what you receive is really insufficient for your support satisfy me by Accounts that it is so”
Deborah to Benjamin:
“distresed att your staying so much longer… so verey lonley that I had got into verey low state and got into so unhapey a way that I cold not sleep… I lost all my memery I cold not tell aney thing but stayed all day but very sleepey… did loos my apeytite and loos my memery… I have had one fitt of the head ake… I was in hopes that a packet… wold in forme when you when you intend to returne agen to your one home… I cont write to you as I am so very unfit to expres my selef and not a bell to due as I yousd for that illness I hed was a polsey… my memery failes me… verey low sperreted… it is verey trubl sume to tell… I don’t make aney complaint to you”
Five days after Deborah’s death in 1774, their son William wrote to Benjamin “I heartily wish you had happened to come over in the fall, as I think her disappointment in that respect prayed a good deal on her spirits.”
The problem about all this is not so much that Franklin stayed away – in some sense he was making a revolution – but that he kept lying about coming back, while abusing his declining wife. This doesn’t fit with Houston’s benign picture of him.