The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 1. Бенджамин Франклин
and at once, it occurred to me that the person to whom the parcel had been entrusted in Paris had assured Mr. Huntington that it should be sent from Cannon Street directly upon its arrival, to Cleveland Square. I immediately returned to the station, repeated the paragraph to this effect in Huntington’s letter to the person in charge, and insisted that the parcel must be there. He asked what it consisted of. I told him generally. ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘there is a portrait here, but it is consigned to one of our clerks who is away at this moment and not expected back until four o’clock.’ He then showed me a bill of lading for a portrait. I felt greatly relieved and now at liberty to be indignant that I should have been compelled to wait for a parcel booked at Paris at 5 p.m. on Saturday, until 4 p.m. of the following Monday. I disregarded the assurances that were now showered upon me that the parcel should be promptly sent to me on the clerk’s return. I said I would wait till the hour appointed, to insure the minimum of risk of further delays and anxiety.
While loitering about the station a man in railway uniform approached and requested me to call again at the office. There I was informed that the parcel had just come in. Where precisely the lying began and where it ended I never knew nor cared to inquire, so absorbed was I in getting the treasure into my possession. I immediately took it, heavy as it was; put it into the cab myself—I would allow no one else to touch it,—and drove off triumphantly to Cleveland Square.
Several months elapsed after my return to the United States before a propitious occasion presented itself for me to verify the correctness of the statement in M. de Senarmont’s note, that my manuscript was more complete than the copy which had been used in preparing the edition published by William Temple Franklin and copied by Dr. Sparks. It had not occurred to me that the text had been tampered with in England after it had left the writer’s hand. A very cursory examination of it, however, awakened my suspicions, and I availed myself of my earliest leisure to subject the Memoirs to a careful collation with the edition which appeared in London in 1817, and which was the first and only edition that ever purported to have been printed from the manuscript. The results of this collation revealed the curious fact that more than twelve hundred separate and distinct changes had been made in the text, and, what is more remarkable, that the last eight pages of the manuscript were omitted entirely.
Many of these changes are mere modernizations of style; such as would measure some of the modifications which English prose had undergone between the days of Goldsmith and Southey. Some, Franklin might have approved of; others he might have tolerated; but it is safe to presume that very many he would have rejected without ceremony.
I immediately prepared a correct edition of the autobiography for the press, and it was published by Messrs. J. B. Lippincott & Co., of Philadelphia, in 1867, when this autobiography, after an interval of more than seventy years since its author’s death, was for the first time given to the public as it was written. It is with the assent and by the courtesy of the Messrs. Lippincott & Co. that we are now permitted to reproduce in this collection the only correct version of, with a single exception, the most widely popular production of Franklin’s genius. Ref. 017
The following translation of a letter from William Temple Franklin to M. le Veillard, written a few days after his grandfather’s death, will conclude all that need be recited here of the history of this famous manuscript: Ref. 018
Philadelphia, 22 May, 1790.
You have already learned, my dear friend, the loss which you and I, and the world, have experienced, in the death of this good and amiable papa. Although we have long expected it, we were none the less shocked by it when it arrived. He loved you very tenderly, as he did all your family, and I do not doubt you will share my just sorrow. I intended writing you the details of his death by M. de Chaumont, but the duty of arranging his affairs, and especially his papers, prevents my answering your last, as well as the one which your daughter was pleased to write me, accompanying her work. I have been touched with this mark of her condescension and friendship, and I beg you to testify to her my gratitude until I have an opportunity of writing to her, which will certainly be by the first occasion for France. Now, as I am about writing, her goodness will awaken me. This letter will reach you by way of England.
I feel it my duty to profit by this occasion to inform you that my grandfather, among other legacies, has left all his papers and manuscripts to me, with permission to turn them to what profit I can. Consequently, I beg you, my dear friend, to show to no one that part of his Life which he sent you some time since, lest some one copy and publish it, which would infinitely prejudice the publication, which I propose to make as soon as possible, of his entire Life and of his other works. As I have the original here of the part which you have, it will not be necessary for you to send it to me, but I beg you at all events to put it in an envelope, well sealed, addressed to me, in order that by no accident it may get into other hands.
If, however, it should be necessary to assist the person who will pronounce his eulogy at the Academy, you may lend it for that purpose, with the stipulation that no copy of it shall be made, and with such other precautions as you deem necessary.
The editor’s only excuse for laying this history before the public with such fulness, is his conviction that the time is at hand, if not already come, when no detail relating to the life or the writings of Franklin, however minute, will be deemed trivial or unimportant. If to any of the readers of these pages this excuse shall seem inadequate, the editor throws himself upon his indulgence.
In addition to the continuation of the Memoirs which was overlooked by William Temple Franklin, the editor was so fortunate as to find in the Le Veillard collection a skeleton sketch of the topics which Dr. Franklin originally proposed to treat in the autobiography. It was, doubtless, the first outline of the work. It is written upon a letter sheet, the first three pages in black ink and in the hand of a copyist, while the concluding seven lines on the fourth page, beginning with “Hutchinson’s Letters,” are in red ink, and in the hand of Franklin himself.
A line is drawn with a pen through the middle of the first page of the manuscript down to the words “Library erected—manner of conducting the project—its plan and utility.” As these are the topics which conclude the first part of the Memoirs, terminating at page 87 of the manuscript, the line was probably drawn by Franklin when he had reached that stage of his work, that he might the more easily know with what topic to resume it when he should have occasion to do so.
We give this outline as an introduction to the Memoirs.
It will be found extremely interesting, first, as showing how systematically Franklin set about the execution of the task of which these Memoirs are the result; and, secondly, for the notions it gives us of the unexecuted portion of his plan.
The printed manuscript ends with his departure to England as agent of the Colony of Pennsylvania, to settle the disputes about the proprietary taxes, in 1757; while the Outline comes down to the conclusion of his diplomatic career, of course embracing the most interesting portion of his life. No one can glance over the subjects that were to have been treated in the succeeding pages of the Memoir without experiencing a new pang of regret at their incompleteness.
I: SKELETON SKETCH OF THE TOPICS FOR THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
[Copie d’un Projêt tres Curieux de Benajmin Franklin—Iere Esquisse de ses Mémoires. Les additions à l’encre rouge sont de la main de Franklin.] Ref. 019
My writing. Mrs. Dogood’s letters. Differences arise between my Brother and me (his temper and mine); their cause in general. His Newspaper. The Prosecution he suffered. My Examination. Vote of Assembly. His manner of evading it. Whereby I became free. My attempt to get employ with other Printers. He prevents me. Our frequent pleadings before our Father. The final Breach. My inducements to quit Boston. Manner of coming to a Resolution. My leaving him and going to New York (return to eating flesh); thence to Pennsylvania. The journey, and its events on the Bay, at Amboy. The road. Meet with Dr. Brown. His character. His great work. At Burlington. The Good Woman. On the River. My arrival at Philadelphia. First Meal and first Sleep. Money left. Employment. Lodging. First acquaintance