Following this meeting, the British drove Washington north to Harlem Heights and on to White Plains. During the evacuation, New York caught fire and a third of it burned. No one ever knew who was responsible. The situation looked hopeless—unless substantial aid could be had from outside. And where could they go for such aid if not to France?
Congress chose three commissioners to represent America at the French court—Jefferson, Franklin, and Silas Deane of Connecticut, who was already in Paris. When Jefferson declined because of his wife’s health, Arthur Lee, cousin of “Light-Horse Harry” Lee of Virginia, was chosen in his place.
Before he left, Franklin appointed Richard Bache as deputy postmaster and turned over to Congress all the money he could raise as a loan—around 4,000 pounds. To his friend Joseph Galloway, he entrusted his trunk, containing his correspondence from the years he had spent in England, as well as the only existing manuscript of his Autobiography. He took with him two grandsons, eighteen-year-old Temple Franklin, and Benjamin Franklin Bache, age seven. They left on the sloop Reprisal, October 27, 1776.
Did the two youths know what a perilous journey they were making, with the English Navy prowling the seas in search of just such prizes as the Reprisal? Temple at least must have realized that if they were captured, his gray-haired grandfather would be considered a prize more valuable than any ship, and would certainly be hanged as a traitor. Not only was the crossing made safely but within two days of landing, the passengers had the thrill of witnessing their captain take two British “prizes,” which the Reprisal on December 3 brought to Auray on the coast of Brittany.
14
FRANCE FALLS IN LOVE WITH AN AMERICAN
“The carriage was a miserable one,” Franklin wrote of the trip from Auray to the French town of Nantes, where the Reprisal would have brought them had it not been for the two prizes. “With tired horses, the evening dark, scarce a traveler but ourselves on the road; and, to make it more comfortable, the driver stopped near a wood we were to pass through, to tell us that a gang of eighteen robbers infested that wood who but two weeks ago had murdered some travelers on that very spot.”
The Nantes townspeople were expecting the celebrated American and were waiting to greet him as he descended from his carriage.
Instead of a curled and powdered wig, he wore a fur cap over his thin gray straight hair, which he had adopted on shipboard for reasons of comfort. His costume was of brown homespun worsted, with white stockings and buckled shoes. He wore spectacles, because at seventy vanity was less important to him than seeing clearly. He carried a plain crabtree cane, such as any man could have cut for himself.
“A primitive!” people exclaimed. His simple attire delighted them all.
For his few days in Nantes he stayed with a commercial agent, Monsieur Gruet. A string of visitors appeared afternoon and evenings to pay their respects. He spoke little, knowing his French was imperfect, and his silence made him seem all the wiser. Everyone was filled with admiration. The women of the town paid him their greatest tribute in a Coiffure à la Franklin, dressing their hair in a high curly mass to resemble his fur cap.