With Condorcet, the philosopher, Franklin was intimate enough to call him, and to be called by him, "My dear and illustrious Confrère"; and it was he, it is worthy of mention, who happily termed Franklin "the modern Prometheus."
For Lafayette, that winning figure, forever fixed in the American memory, despite his visit to America in old age, in immortal youth and freshness, like the young lover and the happy boughs on Keats's Grecian Urn, Franklin had a feeling not unlike that of Washington. In referring to the expedition against England, in which Temple Franklin was to have accompanied Lafayette, Franklin said in a letter to the latter, "I flatter myself, too, that he might possibly catch from you some Tincture of those engaging Manners that make you so much the Delight of all that know you." In another letter, he observed in reply to the statement by Lafayette that the writer had had enemies in America, "You are luckier, for I think you have none here, nor anywhere." When it became his duty to deliver to Lafayette the figured sword presented to the latter by Congress, he performed the office, though ill-health compelled him to delegate the actual delivery of the gift to his grandson, in the apt and pointed language which never failed him upon such occasions. "By the help," he said, "of the exquisite Artists France affords, I find it easy to express everything but the Sense we have of your Worth and our Obligations to you. For this, Figures and even Words are found insufficient." Through all his letters to Lafayette there is a continuous suggestion of cordial attachment to both him and his wife. When Lafayette wrote to him that Madame de Lafayette had just given birth to a daughter, and that he was thinking of naming her Virginia, he replied, "In naming your Children I think you do well to begin with the most antient State. And as we cannot have too many of so good a Race I hope you & Mme de la Fayette will go thro the Thirteen." This letter was written at Passy. In a later letter to Lafayette, written at Philadelphia, he concluded by saying, "You will allow an old friend of four-score to say he loves your wife, when he adds, and children, and prays God to bless them all."
For the Duc de la Rochefoucauld he entertained the highest respect as well as a cordial feeling of friendship. "The good Duke," he terms him in a letter to Dr. Price. And it was to the judgment of the Duke and M. le Veillard in France, as it was to that of Vaughan and Dr. Price in England, as we shall see, that he left the important question as to whether any of the Autobiography should be published, and, if so, how much. Among the many tributes paid to his memory, was a paper on his life and character read by the Duke before the Society of 1789. One of the Duke's services to America was that of translating into French, at the request of Franklin, for European circulation all the constitutions of the American States.
Lavoisier was a member with Franklin of the commission which investigated the therapeutic value of mesmerism, and exposed the imposture of Mesmer. There are no social incidents in the intercourse of the two men, friendly as it was, so far as we know, worthy of mention; but, in a passage in one of Franklin's letters to Jan Ingenhousz, we have a glimpse of the master, of whom, when guillotined, after the brutal declaration of Coffinhal, the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, that the Republic had no need for savants, Lagrange remarked, "They needed but a moment to lay that head low, and a hundred years, perhaps, will not be sufficient to reproduce its like." Speaking of an experiment performed by Lavoisier, Franklin wrote to Jan Ingenhousz, "He kindled a hollow Charcoal, and blew into it a Stream of dephlogisticated Air. In this Focus, which is said to be the hottest fire human Art has yet been able to produce, he melted Platina in a few Minutes."
Franklin's friend, the Chevalier (afterwards Marquis) de Chastellux, who served with the Comte de Rochambeau in America, and was the author of the valuable Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 81 and 82, succeeded in making himself as agreeable to American women as Franklin succeeded in making himself to French women. There is an echo of this popularity in one of Franklin's letters to him. "Dare I confess to you," he said, when he was still at Passy, and the Chevalier was still in America, "that I am your rival with Madame G——? (Franklin's Katy). I need not tell you, that I am not a dangerous one. I perceive that she loves you very much; and so does, dear Sir, yours, &c."
Through the influence of Leray de Chaumont, Ferdinand Grand, who was a Swiss Protestant, became the banker of our representatives in France, and, after Franklin's return to America, he remained entrusted with some of Franklin's private funds upon which the latter was in the habit of drawing from time to time. The correspondence between Franklin and himself is almost wholly lacking in social interest, but it indicates a deep feeling of affection upon Franklin's part.
For Dupont de Nemours, the distinguished economist, and the founder of the family, which has been so conspicuous in the industrial, military and naval history of the United States, Franklin cherished a feeling distinctly friendly. His acquaintance with Dupont as well as with Dubourg, who, like Dupont, was a member of the group of French Economists, known as the Physiocrats, was formed, as we have seen, before his mission to France. The correspondence between Franklin and Dupont, however, like that between Franklin and Grand, has but little significance for the purposes of this chapter.[40]
This, however, is not true of the relations between Dr. Barbeu Dubourg, a medical practitioner of high standing, and Franklin. They not only opened their minds freely to each other upon a considerable variety of topics, but their intercourse was colored by cordial association. Of all the men who came under the spell of Franklin's genius, Dubourg, who was, to use Franklin's own words, "a man of extensive learning," was one of the American philosopher's most enthusiastic pupils. "My dear Master," was the term that he habitually used in speaking of him, and his reverence for the object of his admiration led him to translate into French, with some additions, the edition of Franklin's scientific papers, brought out in London by David Henry in 1769. Nothing that he had ever written, he told his master, had been so well received as the preface to this compilation. "So great," he declared, "is the advantage of soaring in the shadow of Franklin's wings." We pass by the communications from Franklin to Dubourg on purely scientific subjects. One letter from the former to him brings to our knowledge a curious habit into which Franklin was drawn by the uncompromising convictions that he entertained in regard to the origin of bad colds and the virtues of ventilation, of which we shall hereafter speak more particularly.
You know [he said] the cold bath has long been in vogue here as a tonic; but the shock of the cold water has always appeared to me, generally speaking, as too violent, and I have found it much more agreeable to my constitution to bathe in another element, I mean cold air. With this view I rise almost every morning, and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing. This practice is not in the least painful, but, on the contrary, agreeable; and, if I return to bed afterwards, before I dress myself, as sometimes happens, I make a supplement to my night's rest of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep that can be imagined. I find no ill consequences whatever resulting from it, and that at least it does not injure my health, if it does not in fact contribute much to its preservation.
Another letter from Franklin to Dubourg is a dissertation on swimming—the only form of outdoor exercise, to which he was addicted—but in which he was, throughout his life, such an adept that he could even make the following entry in his Journal, when he was at Southampton on his return to America from France: "I went at noon to bathe in Martin's salt-water hot-bath, and, floating on my back, fell asleep, and slept near an hour by my watch without sinking or turning! a thing I never did before, and should hardly have thought possible. Water is the easiest bed that can be!" In the letter to Dubourg, he recalls the assertion of a M. Robinson that fat persons with small bones float most easily upon the water, makes a passing reference to the diving bell and the swimming waist-coat, now known as the life-preserver, and suggests the comfort of varying the progressive motion of swimming by turning over occasionally upon one's back, and otherwise. He also states that the best method of allaying cramp is to give a sudden vigorous and violent shock to the affected region; which may be done in the air as the swimmer swims along on his back, and recalls an incident illustrative of the danger of throwing one's self, when thoroughly heated, into cold spring water.