Ben of course is not overlooked. "I am much pleas'd with the Acc' I receive from all Hands of your dear little Boy. I hope he will be continu'd a Blessing to us all." It must have been a great gratification to him to learn that Betsey, William Franklin's wife, as well as Deborah, had stood as godmother for the child. In his next letter to Sally, acknowledging the receipt of a pleasing letter from her, he states that he is glad that she has undertaken the care of the housekeeping, as it would be an ease to her mother, especially if she could manage to her approbation. "That," he commented significantly, "may perhaps be at first a Difficulty."[23] It would be of use to her, he continued, if she would get a habit of keeping exact accounts, and it would be some satisfaction to him to see them, for she should remember, for her encouragement in good economy, that, whatever a child saves of its parents' money, will be its own another day. "Study," the letter concludes, "Poor Richard a little, and you may find some Benefit from his Instructions." These letters were all written from London. The rest of Franklin's letters to Sally alone were written from Passy. In the first he says that, if she knew how happy her letters made him, and considered how many of them miscarried, she would, he thought, write oftener. A daughter had then been added to the members of the Bache household, and that he had a word to pen about her goes almost without saying. He expresses the hope that Sally would again be out of the city during the hot months for the sake of this child's health, "for I begin to love the dear little creature from your description of her," he said. This was the letter in which Sally was so pointedly scored for not living more simply and frugally.
I was charmed [he declared] with the account you gave me of your industry, the table cloths of your own spinning, &c.; but the latter part of the paragraph, that you had sent for linen from France, because weaving and flax were grown dear, alas, that dissolved the charm; and your sending for long black pins, and lace, and feathers! disgusted me as much as if you had put salt into my strawberries. The spinning, I see, is laid aside, and you are to be dressed for the ball! You seem not to know, my dear daughter, that, of all the dear things in this world, idleness is the dearest, except mischief.
Then Ben as usual comes in for notice. As he intended him for a Presbyterian as well as a Republican, he had sent him to finish his education at Geneva, Franklin stated.
He is much grown [he continues] in very good health, draws a little, as you will see by the enclosed, learns Latin, writing, arithmetic, and dancing, and speaks French better than English. He made a translation of your last letter to him, so that some of your works may now appear in a foreign language.
A few sentences more, with regard to her second son, Will, and another topic and there is a regurgitation of his disgust over Sally's extravagance.
When I began [he said] to read your account of the high prices of goods, "a pair of gloves, $7; a yard of common gauze, $24, and that it now required a fortune to maintain a family in a very plain way," I expected you would conclude with telling me, that everybody as well as yourself was grown frugal and industrious; and I could scarce believe my eyes in reading forward, that "there never was so much pleasure and dressing going on," and that you yourself wanted black pins and feathers from France to appear, I suppose, in the mode! This leads me to imagine, that it is perhaps not so much that the goods are grown dear, as that the money is grown cheap, as everything else will do when excessively plenty; and that people are still as easy nearly in their circumstances, as when a pair of gloves might be had for half a crown. The war indeed may in some degree raise the prices of goods, and the high taxes which are necessary to support the war may make our frugality necessary; and, as I am always preaching that doctrine, I cannot in conscience or in decency encourage the contrary, by my example, in furnishing my children with foolish modes and luxuries. I therefore send all the articles you desire, that are useful and necessary, and omit the rest; for, as you say you should "have great pride in wearing anything I send, and showing it as your father's taste," I must avoid giving you an opportunity of doing that with either lace or feathers. If you wear your cambric ruffles as I do, and take care not to mend the holes, they will come in time to be lace, and feathers, my dear girl, may be had in America from every cock's tail.
Franklin's last letter to Sally was written from Passy, and contains the inimitable strictures on the Order of the Cincinnati, to which we shall hereafter return, but nothing of any personal or domestic interest.
Two of the letters of Franklin are written to Sally and her husband together. "Dear Son and Daughter," is the way he begins, and one ends, "I am ever my dear Children, your affectionate Father."
Both of these letters were written from Passy. One of them, in addition to letting the parents know that Ben promised to be a stout, as well as a good, man, presents with no little pathos the situation of the writer on the eve of his departure from France for Philadelphia in 1785. After mentioning his efforts to engage some good vessel bound directly for Philadelphia, which would agree to take him on board at Havre with his grandsons, servants and baggage, he sketches this lugubrious picture of himself.