Benjamin Franklin's Humor

7. Seducing Paris 1776–1782

119 Seducing Paris 7 SEDUCING PARIS 1776–1782 Coming home to Philadelphia on 5 May 1775 allowed Franklin no time for comedy. On the following day, his neighbors elected him to the Continental Congress. In November, Congress dispatched him to confer with General Washington at Cambridge. The next spring, they sent him to Canada to recruit allies. In autumn, he went to Staten Island to negotiate a last time with Lord Richard Howe. In October, he was posted to Paris seeking funds and allies. He arrived on 23 December with two young grandsons, Benjamin Bache and William Temple Franklin, and settled down at suburban Passy where, he said, for the next eight years, he went through more business than ever before in his life.1 In America, duty had left no time for writing humorous familiar letters. In France, that sort of personal writing offered a means to learn French, ingratiate himself with the French court, and shape public opinion. His fame as comical Poor Richard, or Bonhomme Richard, preceded him, and so, as in the Craven Street Gazette, he put on the Socratic mask as his own comic hero. When illness imposed idleness, or in periods of enforced inaction, he wrote comical letters or short essays, “bagatelles”—little sketches—knowing that they would be read in fashionable salons. In his official capacity, of course, he composed informational brochures on America, but as the principal American bureaucrat, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S HUMOR 120 harried by requests, he would find comic relief in such exercises as a letter of recommendation suitable for all occasions. Paris April 2, 1777 Sir, The Bearer of this who is going to America, presses me to give him a Letter of Recommendation, tho’ I know nothing of him, not even his Name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes indeed one unknown Person brings me another equally unknown, to recommend him, and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his Character and Merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be; I recommend him however to those Civilities which every Stranger, of whom one knows no Harm, has a Right to, and I request you will do him all the good Offices and show him all the Favour that on further Acquaintance you shall find him to deserve. I have the honour to be, &c.2 Franklin continued to give his comic fancy freest range in familiar letters. To Emma Thompson, an Anglo-Irish friend from London before the war, he described himself pretty much as the Abbé Flamarens described him in the Paris tabloid, Memoires Secrets (15 January 1777): carrying a cane, wearing glasses, dressed simply as a Quaker, thin hair unpowdered in a fur cap—a cartoon of Parisian preconceptions of an amiable American Quaker grandpa. I know you wish you could see me, but as you can’t, I will describe my self to you. Figure me in your mind as jolly as formerly , and as strong and hearty, only a few Years older, very plainly dress’d, wearing my thin grey strait Hair, that peeps out under my only Coiffure, a fine Fur Cap, which comes down my Forehead almost to my Spectacles. Think how this must appear among the Powder’d Heads of Paris. I wish every Gentleman and Lady in France would only be so obliging as to follow my Fashion, comb 121 Seducing Paris their own Heads as I do mine, dismiss their Friseurs, and pay me half the Money they paid to them. You see the Gentry might well afford this; and I could then inlist those Friseurs, who are at least 100,000; and with the Money I would maintain them, make a Visit with them to England, and dress the Heads of your Ministers and Privy Counsellors, which I conceive to be at present un peu dérangeés [a little disordered].3 Franklin joked about his iconography in France. Despite rumors that Louis XVI had chamber pots with Franklin’s image at the bottom, none survive.4 In Memoires Secrets the Abbé Flamarens reported Franklin’s portrait was the favorite New Year’s gift and that people kept it on their mantles like an icon. With a little more modesty, Franklin reported the same phenomenon in writing to daughter Sally Bache about his miniature portrait on...