THE TWO FRANKLINS — Bernard Faÿ —Little, Brown ($3.50).
Benjamin Franklin is still a canonical name in U. S. history despite modern knowledge of the ins & outs of the Doctor's private life. But many a devout patriot may be dismayed by French Professor Faÿ's sympathetic disclosure of the public goings-on of Franklin's favorite (legitimate) grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache. Few U. S. schoolboys have ever heard of Benny Bache, whom Biographer Faÿ describes as "the most outspoken, the most reckless, the most generous, and the most neglected" figure of his day. In this authoritative but racily written biography Author Faÿ takes the lid off a period of U. S. history that has long been simmering in academic ovens, dishes it up with spicy Gallic sauce.
In 1776, when Benny Bache was only seven, his famed grandfather took him abroad to school him. Franklin gave Benny every advantage he had never had : dancing, deportment and French in Paris, Greek, Latin and virtue in Geneva. Franklin hoped Benny would become a high servant of the State. Benny was quite willing, but when he came home again to Philadelphia, at 16, he found that his grandfather's fame kept getting in his way. Franklin was a national hero but Washington and the Federalists disliked his philosophy and feared his politics: they shut every political door in his grandson's face. Franklin fitted Benny up in a printshop and expected Benny to be happy, but he wasn't. "While Franklin, by his precept, urged him to become a craftsman, he obliged him, by his glory, to act the lordling. While he preached simplicity, industry, frugality and love of the people to him, his three houses, his sedan chair, his titles and his fame gave him the rank of a nobleman. When he thought about this, Benny felt wretched and ashamed. But what could he do about it?'"
To add to his troubles Benny fell in love with Margaret Markoe. Uncertain, coy and hard to please, she led him a weary dance but finally married him. Benjamin Franklin died. The same year (1790) Benny started his first newspaper, the General Advertiser, and Political, Commercial, Agricultural and Literary Journal.
This paper and its successor, the Aurora, became chief begetters of what Author Faÿ calls "the second American Revolution . . . that broke Federalism and the English alliance." After the Revolutionary War the Federalists, with Washington as their dignified figurehead, grew cooler & cooler to France, wanted a treaty with England. They overrode Ambassador Genet's dangerous popularity with the U. S. crowd, forced his retirement. But when John Jay brought back from England his famed pusillanimous treaty, even Washington kept the text dark till he could be sure of getting it through Congress. Benny Bache spilled the beans: he got a copy of the treaty, printed it in his paper, loosed a storm of popular indignation.