Exhibitions Review: Knowing a Man (Ben Franklin), but Not Melons

NY Times ^ | Dec. 19, 2005 | EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

[Pharmboy]

Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary

"Dr. Franklin's Profile," by Red Grooms, is on view in Philadelphia.

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 14 -There was something insufferable about Benjamin Franklin, and many of his contemporaries knew it. John Adams wrote, "Had he been an ordinary man, I should never have taken the trouble to expose the turpitude of his intrigues, or to vindicate my reputation against his vilifications and calumnies."

Franklin could change positions when they seemed unpopular, compromise on principles and turn statecraft into a matter of personality. snip...

In other contexts, Franklin's treatment of family could have made Poor Richard blush through his almanack: He began a three-generation tradition of siring illegitimate children; he made sure to spend 15 of the last 17 years of his marriage away from his wife in foreign lands, making no effort to see her in her final years; to his children and heirs he was capable of stunning callousness mixed with bouts of devotion.

Nor was his later reputation sterling among literary figures. Melville referred to Franklin's "primeval orientalness." Mark Twain, only partly in jest, accused him of "animosity toward boys" with his pert maxims about propriety. D. H. Lawrence, who could have been Franklin in a fun-house mirror, called him a "dry, moral, utilitarian little democrat."

No, Franklin, the middle-class materialist and moralist, has not had an easy time of it, particularly during much of the 20th century when he was often considered annoyingly bourgeois. It is even difficult to clearly define his contribution to the founding of the United States. Unlike Jefferson, he was not a devotee of high principle and a practitioner of high prose. Unlike Washington, he could not have led an army through adversity or channeled a fledgling country through birth pangs. Unlike Madison or even Hamilton, he was no theoretician.

[Pharmboy]

Franklin was the first American international celebrity. It was said that there was not mantle in Paris that did not have a small portrait of Franklin adorning it during his residence there.

[SunkenCiv]

If memory serves, Franklin's son headed some kind of royalist commission to try (in all but name) Bennie baby for some transgression (may have been something about circulating private letters, can't recall). They had been estranged even before that time.

[Restorer]

You are confusing separate incidents.

Franklin somehow wound up in possession of private letters of the governor of MA, which he forwarded (or maybe copies) to his political opponents. Not terribly ethical for a man who was the postmaster general of the colonies.

His son was not involved.

Their estrangement was caused almost entirely by his son taking the opposite side in the Revolution, which BF saw as a personal betrayal.

[confederacy of dunces]

Thanks for posting the info about those two exhibitions. One is coming to a site near me! Woo hoo!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks.