THE MATURE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 1777
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
The Man
TWO
Benjamin Franklin was the first distinguished American “self-made man.” He took himself in hand at an early age, and with only two years schooling, educated himself so that he became a man of science, a man of letters, a philosopher, a statesman and a diplomat, and acquired a fortune besides. And not only was he all of these things, more than creditably, but he took rank among the greatest minds of the highly educated and scientific Eighteenth Century. This was a period of original investigation: much “new thought” of all kinds was coming into the world, and Franklin’s mind was exactly the type of mind that was characteristic of this age—particularly in France. Apart from his genial personality and his talent for always doing the right thing and the popular thing socially, his scientific and philosophical tastes were precisely those in fashion in France.
How did this man attain to such power and eminence? At twenty-three he was half-educated and crude. At forty he was known as one of the most famous scientists of the day and a brilliant writer; and before he was fifty he had received the Copley medal from the Royal Society; the freedom of the City of Edinburgh; LL.D. from the University of St. Andrews; degrees from Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary; and, in 1762, D.C.L. from Oxford.
What were the characteristics and the tastes, and what was the disposition and the appearance of the extraordinary personage who accomplished all these things? These are questions that are naturally asked.
We never think of Franklin in his youth. We picture him according to the Duplessis (dew-ples′-see) portrait painted in Paris when he was seventy-two; or, according to the old prints that show him wearing the familiar old fur cap and the heavy-rimmed spectacles. Franklin was rather tall (about five feet ten inches), corpulent and heavy, with rounded shoulders. He was a good swimmer; he was muscular and strong, and he was a believer in vegetarianism and air-baths. In late years he suffered from gout in his foot, and wrote in Paris a humorous dialogue from which we get a very good idea of the old gentleman’s habits and tastes. On his appeal to Gout to spare him, his persecutor exclaims: “Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away; your apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreations, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterwards you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition. But what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful garden of those friends with whom you have dined, would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours!”
But notwithstanding his sedentary life and his gout and his other maladies, Franklin lived to be eighty-four, preserving his extraordinary brightness and gayety to the last. His mental faculties were unimpaired, his face was fresh and serene, and his spirits were buoyant.