網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

TO MRS. DEBORAH FRANKLIN.

Visit to the Bishop of St. Asaph's Family.

MY DEAR CHILD,

London, 14 August, 1771.

I am glad to hear of all your welfares, and that the pictures were safe arrived. You do not tell me who mounted the great one, nor where you have hung it up. Let me know whether Dr. Bond likes the new one better than the old one; if so, the old one is to be returned hither to Mr. Wilson, the painter. You may keep the frame, as it may be wanted for some other picture there. I wrote to you a letter the beginning of last month, which was to go by Captain Falconer, and have since been in the country. I am just returned to town, and find him still here, and the letters not gone. He goes, however, next

Saturday.

I had written to many of my friends by him. I spent three weeks in Hampshire, at my friend the Bishop of St. Asaph's. The Bishop's lady knows what children and grandchildren I have and their ages; so, when I was to come away on Monday the 12th, in the morning, she insisted on my staying that one day longer, that we might together keep my grandson's birthday. At dinner, among other nice things, we had a floating island, which they always particularly have on the birthdays of any of their own six children, who were all but one at table, where there was also a clergyman's widow, now above one hundred years old. The chief toast of the day was, Master Benjamin Bache, which the venerable old lady began in a bumper of mountain. The Bishop's lady politely added, "and that he may be as good a man as his grand

father." I said I hoped he would be much better. The Bishop, still more complaisant than his lady, said, "We will compound the matter, and be contented if he should not prove quite so good." This chitchat is to yourself only, in return for some of yours about your grandson, and must only be read to Sally, and not spoken of to anybody else; for you know how people add and alter silly stories that they hear, and make them appear ten times more silly.

Just while I am writing, the post brings me the enclosed from the good Bishop, with some letters of recommendation for Ireland, to see which country I am to set out next week with my old friend and fellow traveller, Counsellor Jackson. We expect to be absent a month or six weeks. The Bishop's youngest daughter, mentioned in his letter, is about thirteen years of age, and came up with me in the postchaise to go to school.

[ocr errors]

Captain Osborn is not yet arrived here, but is every day expected. I hope he will come before I set out, that I may hear from you by him. I desire you will push the inquiry after the Lancaster Dutchman, and not let it sleep and be forgotten. I send you by Captain Falconer a box of looking-glasses for the closet door in the *

The remainder is lost. It was during this visit at the Bishop of St. Asaph's, that Dr. Franklin commenced writing the memoirs of his life, in the form of a letter to his son.

TO MRS. MARY HEWSON.

DEAR FRIEND,

Preston, 25 November, 1771.

I came to this place on Saturday night, right well, and untired with a seventy miles' journey. That day I met with your and my Dolly's joint letter, which would have refreshed me with its kindness, if I had been ever so weary.

The account you give of a certain lady's having entertained a new gallant, in my absence, did not surprise me; for I have been used to rivals, and scarce ever had a friend or a mistress in my whole life, that other people did not like as well as myself. And, therefore, I did not wonder, when I read in the newspapers some weeks since, that "the Duke of C." (that general lover) "had made many visits of late to an old lady not many miles from Craven Street." I only wondered, considering the dislike she used to have for the family, that she would receive his visits. But as I saw, soon after, that Prince Charles had left Rome, and was gone a long journey, nobody knew whither, I made no doubt but the newswriters had mistaken the person, and that it was he, who had taken the opportunity of my absence to solace himself with his old friend.

I thank you for your intelligence about my godson I believe you are sincere, when you say you think him as fine a child as you wish to see. He had cut two teeth, and three, in another letter, make five; for I know you never write tautologies. If I have overreckoned, the number will be right by this time. His being like me in so many particulars pleases me prodigiously; and I am persuaded there is another, which you have omitted, though it must have occurred to

you while you were putting them down. Pray let him have every thing he likes. I think it of great consequence while the features of the countenance are forming; it gives them a pleasant air, and, that being once become natural and fixed by habit, the face is ever after the handsomer for it, and on that much of a person's good fortune and success in life may depend. Had I been crossed as much in my infant likings and inclinations as you know I have been of late years, I should have been, I was going to say, not near so handsome; but as the vanity of that expression would offend other folks' vanity, I change it, out of regard to them, and say, a great deal more homely.

I rejoice that your good mother's new regimen succeeds so well with her. We are to set out, my son and I, to-morrow for London, where I hope to be by the end of the week, and to find her, and you, and all yours well and happy. My love to them all. They tell me dinner is coming in, and I have yet said nothing to Dolly; but must nevertheless conclude, my dear friend, yours ever most affectionately,

[blocks in formation]

1 received your kind letters of September 12th and November 9th. I have now been some weeks returned from my journey through Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the North of England, which, besides being an agreeable tour with a pleasant companion, has contrib

uted to the establishment of my health; and this is the first ship I have heard of, by which I could write to you.

I thank you for the receipts; they are as full and particular as one could wish; but they can easily be practised only in America, no bayberry wax, nor any Brasiletto, being here to be had, at least to my knowledge. I am glad, however, that those useful arts, which have so long been in our family, are now put down in writing. Some future branch may be the better for it.

It gives me pleasure, that those little things sent by Jonathan proved agreeable to you. I write now to cousin Williams to press the payment of the bond. There has been forbearance enough on my part; seven years or more, without receiving any principal or interest. It seems as if the debtor was like a whimsical man in Pennsylvania, of whom it was said that, it being against his principle to pay interest, and against his interest to pay the principal, he paid neither one nor the other.

I doubt you have taken too old a pair of glasses, being tempted by their magnifying greatly. But people in choosing should only aim at remedying the defect. The glasses that enable them to see as well, at the same distance they used to hold their book or work, while their eyes were good, are those they should choose; not such as make them see better, for such contribute to hasten the time when still older glasses will become necessary.

All, who have seen my grandson, agree with you in their accounts of his being an uncommonly fine boy, which brings often afresh to my mind the idea of my son Franky,* though now dead thirty-six years,

*His son, Francis Folger, who died when four years of age,

« 上一頁繼續 »