I fancy I feel a little like dying Saints [he said], who, in parting with those they love in this World, are only comforted with the Hope of more perfect Happiness in the next. I have, in America, Connections of the most engaging kind; and, happy as I have been in the Friendships here contracted, those promise me greater and more lasting Felicity. But God only knows whether these Promises shall be fulfilled.
Then came the letter written to her from a "wretched inn" at Portsmouth when he was on the point of embarking for America. It is none the less noteworthy because it reveals the fact that the thought of a marriage between Polly and his son had been a familiar one to him and her.
It (the paper on which he wrote) [he said] will tell my Polly how much her Friend is afflicted, that he must, perhaps, never again, see one for whom he has so sincere an Affection, join'd to so perfect an Esteem; who he once flatter'd himself might become his own, in the tender Relation of a Child, but can now entertain such pleasing Hopes no more. Will it tell how much he is afflicted? No, it can not.
Adieu, my dearest Child. I will call you so. Why should I not call you so, since I love you with all the Tenderness, All the Fondness of a Father? Adieu. May the God of all Goodness shower down his choicest Blessings upon you, and make you infinitely Happier, than that Event could have made you.
No wonder that the fatherless girl should have felt from the day that she received this letter until the day that she helped to assuage the pain of Franklin's last hours by her loving ministrations that the heart in which she was so deeply cherished was one of these blessings. A few months later, Franklin writes to her from America a long, communicative letter, valuable among other reasons for the evidence that it affords of the ready sympathy with which he had entered into her circle of youthful friendships. He tells her that he shares her grief over her separation from her old friend Miss Pitt; "Pitty," he calls her in another place in this letter when he sends his love to her. He congratulates her upon the recovery of her "dear Dolly's" health. This was Dorothea Blount to whom he repeatedly refers in his letters to her. "I love that dear good Girl myself, and I love her other Friends," he said. Polly's statement in the letter, to which his letter was a reply, that she had lately had the pleasure of spending three days with Doctor and Mrs. Hawkesworth at the house of John Stanley, all warm friends of his, elicits from him the exclamation, "It was a sweet Society!"
These are but a few of the many details that make up this letter. Polly was one of the stimulating correspondents who brought out all that was best in Franklin's own intellectual resources, and the next time that he wrote to her from America he used this appreciative and grateful language. "The Ease, the Smoothness, the Purity of Diction, and Delicacy of Sentiment, that always appear in your Letters, never fail to delight me; but the tender filial Regard you constantly express for your old Friend is particularly engaging."
In later letters to Polly, written after his return to England in 1764, there are other lively passages like those that animated his letters to her before his return to America. On one occasion he answers a letter from her in verse.
A Muse, you must know, visited me this Morning! I see you are surpriz'd, as I was. I never saw one before. And shall never see another. So I took the Opportunity of her Help to put the Answer into Verse, because I was some Verse in your Debt ever since you sent me the last Pair of Garters.
This letter is succeeded by a highly vivacious one from Paris where he enjoyed the honor of conversing with the King and Queen while they sat at meat. The latter letter is so full of sparkling fun that we cannot but regret that Franklin did not leave behind him equally detailed narratives of his travels in Germany and Holland, and over the face of Great Britain. All the way to Dover, he said, he was engaged in perpetual disputes with innkeepers, hostlers and postilions because he was prevented from seeing the country by the forward tilt of the hoods of the post-chaises in which he was driven; "they insisting that the Chaise leaning forward was an Ease to the Horses, and that the contrary would kill them." "I suppose the chaise leaning forward," he surmised, "looks to them like a Willingness to go forward, and that its hanging back shows a Reluctance." He concludes a humorous description of the seasickness of a number of green passengers between Dover and Calais, who made a hearty breakfast in the morning, before embarking, for fear that, if the wind should fail, they might not get over till supper time, with the remark, "So it seems there are Uncertainties, even beyond those between the Cup and the Lip." Impositions suffered by Franklin on the journey, the smooth highways of France, the contrast between the natural brunettes of Calais and Boulogne and the natural blondes of Abbéville, the Parisian complexions to which nature in every form was a total stranger, the Grand Couvert where the Royal Family supped in public, the magnificence of Versailles and Paris, to which nothing was wanting but cleanliness and tidiness, the pure water and fine streets of Paris, French politeness, the paintings, the plays and operas of the gayest capital in the world all furnished topics for this delightful letter, composed in the high spirits born of rapid movement from one novel experience to another, and doubtless endued, when read, with the never failing charm that belongs to foreign scenes, scanned by the eyes of those we love. Franklin did not know which were the most rapacious, the English or the French boatmen or porters, but the latter had with their knavery, he thought, the most politeness. The only drawback about the roads in France, paved with smooth stone-like streets for many miles together, and flanked on each side with trees, was the labor which the peasants complained that they had to expend upon them for full two months in the year without pay. Whether this was truth, or whether, like Englishmen, they grumbled, cause or no cause, Franklin had not yet been able to fully inform himself.
Passing over his speculations as to the origin of the fair complexions of the women of Abbéville, where wheels and looms were going in every house, we stop for a moment to reproduce this unsparing description of the manner in which the women of Paris exercised the art which has never been known to excite any form of approval except feminine self-approval.