JOSEPH GALLOWAY WORKED ALONGSIDE Governor Franklin for the rest of the 1780s in the effort to secure loyalist claims, writing several persuasive pamphlets and testifying before the commission for American claimants. When Franklin’s own case was heard in 1788, Galloway was one of a dozen witnesses, along with Cortlandt Skinner, fellow Tory governor Philip Skene, and General Henry Clinton himself. William’s statement of services and claims totaled £48,245 sterling, representing restitution for lost wages, property in New York, New Jersey, and Indiana, twenty million acres of “Vandalia,” debts owed him, splendid furniture, and an expensive library.
Franklin needed those witnesses. Much to his dismay the commissioners heeded rumors that the governor had benefited from collusion with Dr. Franklin. Temple’s efforts to get his father a position in the diplomatic corps in 1782 looked suspicious, providing ammunition to anyone who wished to avoid paying the governor tens of thousands of pounds in reparations. They demanded that the witnesses substantiate his services to the Crown and testify to his loyalty. Finally they awarded the claimant £1,800 as the value of his furniture destroyed in the New York fire, and that was all. Acknowledging his poverty, they increased his pension to £800 per year.
Galloway had to settle for an annual pension of £500. Unaccustomed to poverty and inconsequence, he was sad in England. He tried and failed to secure the post of chief justice of Nova Scotia. In 1790, he petitioned the government of Pennsylvania to drop the charges of war crimes against him, begging to be repatriated. He argued that he had been driven to loyalism against his better judgment.
He died in the market town of Watford, north of London, in 1803, in obscurity.
IN AUGUST 1788, SOON after receiving his grant, William Franklin married Mary D’Evelin. They lived well, dividing their time between the house in Marylebone in the winter and autumn and a cottage by the sea in warm weather. They enjoyed traveling in Ireland, where Mary had relatives, and Scotland, where William had so many friends. Mary’s adolescent sister came to live with them soon after they were married.
William continued an affectionate correspondence with his sister for the rest of his life. He urged Sally to come to England, which she could not do while her father lived, because the Baches could not afford the trip, and Benjamin would not agree to it. He needed her attentions at home there on Market Street. In that shrine to greatness, with its books and stoves, lightning rods, bells, medals, and harpsichords, children and pilgrims, Sally waited upon him as Deborah had once done. In this she had the devoted cooperation of Polly Stevenson, who—as good as her word—followed her mentor to Philadelphia with her brood a year after he arrived.
Franklin’s contribution to the federal Constitutional Convention in 1787, his campaign for abolition, and his painful demise eased by opium during his last years have been well chronicled. He died of pleurisy on the evening of April 17, 1790, at the age of eighty-four, and is buried beside his wife in Christ Church cemetery, Philadelphia. In his last will and testament he had—in sensational fashion—the last word in the tragic dialogue with his son. He bequeathed William land in Nova Scotia that no longer belonged to him to bequeath, as well as books and papers of his that were already in William’s possession. Finally, he forgave all outstanding debts.
There were no outstanding debts.
“The part he [William] acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety,” Benjamin wrote, “will account for my leaving him no more of an estate than he endeavored to deprive me of.” He left his son nothing but a sentence so shamefully cruel in a sacred document that there were some who considered it the dead man’s curse.
His wealth passed to the Bache family and Temple Franklin. Temple, who inherited all of his grandfather’s papers, made arrangements to travel to London with a view to finding a publisher. The Baches would follow in the spring of 1792, with funds courtesy of the king of France. Defying a prohibition in Franklin’s will against disposing of the fabulous brooch or any of its diamonds in Sally’s lifetime, her husband pried out a few dozen brilliants and sold them to the local jeweler. They sailed for England and stayed there half a year, wintering in London with William and his wife, and Temple, in 1792–93.
Temple managed to disappoint everyone. Perhaps no one was more disappointed than the women who fell in love with him. But let us first consider his father and grandfather. It is no exaggeration to say that Benjamin Franklin worshipped the ground Temple walked upon. He spoiled the boy, flattering and indulging him to a degree that was sometimes an embarrassment to his friends and a comfort to his enemies. No tailor or bootmaker was too dear, no fabric or wig too rich or costly, no wine of Burgundy or Bordeaux too fine for his cellar.
He must have not only the best dog and horse but also the best portrait of the thoroughbred painted by the best horse painter to hang on the wall. His grandfather would see to it there was money for women, too, when it was called for. The youth was a veritable Adonis, and the husbands of the French neighborhood—including a rich Scots lord and a famous actor—were on constant guard against him. His inhibitions, if not his morals, were agreeably relaxed by generous doses of Champagne and French beer. The amounts of alcohol the family consumed in Passy, proudly itemized in Temple’s hand, were gargantuan.
Nonetheless, Benjamin judged this grandson as one “who has no vices.” To John Adams, Franklin boasted of Temple’s “sagacity beyond his years, diligence, activity, fidelity, genteel address, facility in speaking French.” Adams disagreed. So did Thomas Jefferson, who got to know Temple later.
In a letter introducing Temple to Bishop Shipley in the summer of 1784, Franklin confided: “My grandson, a good young man (who as a son makes up to me my loss by the estrangement of his father) will have the honor of delivering you this line.” The parenthesis betrays him. Nothing could make up to Benjamin Franklin what he had lost, and yet he would live and die in hopes that Temple would redeem all of it.
Polly, who liked Temple when she first met him, might have informed her mentor about his grandson’s imperfections. After two months in Passy she wrote to her sister: “He has such a love of dress and is so absorbed in self-importance and so engaged in the pursuit of pleasure that he is not an amiable nor a respectable character; he is just fit to be employed in a court and to be the gallant of the French ladies, nothing else.”
Perhaps Benjamin Franklin did not live long enough to give up hope of Temple’s redemption and success. But as the decade wore on he must have doubted it. Approaching the age of thirty, the no longer young man had been unable to get a position in the new government, nor any other gainful employment. He was exactly as Polly Stevenson had described him, a French courtier with no formal education or skills. He owned the farm his father had started in New Jersey, on Rancocas Creek. Adrift, with no other choice, he briefly played at being a gentleman farmer, and was in the course of failing at this, too, when his grandfather died and left him his inheritance.
In the spring of 1791, Temple Franklin arrived in London in pursuit of a publisher. He did not notify his father in advance that he was coming, but William, now in his early sixties and a distinguished man of leisure, was happy to see him. Temple rented a new house in fashionable Manchester Square, seven blocks east of his father’s home.
Temple’s arrival—and the offending articles of his grandfather’s will—had erased any desire William may have had to return to America. He enjoyed his son’s company, despite what he perceived as shiftlessness, indolence, and self-indulgence. London bored Temple. He preferred Paris, and sailed back and forth across the Channel as if money was inexhaustible.
The winter of 1792–93 was particularly enjoyable for the family, as the Baches lived nearby in London the entire season. William was able to introduce Richard and Sally to his circle of friends, men such as Andrew Strahan, Edward Gibbon, and Dr. Johnson. After returning to Philadelphia, the Baches would send their son William (his uncle’s namesake) to England to complete his medical studies, in the summer of 1794. The difference in the cousins’ temperaments was evident. William Franklin wrote to Sally in August to tell her of young Bache’s meeting with Dr. Johnson, who held a high opinion of the student’s medical skills.
Temple had no profession. Sometime in the middle of that decade he developed an attachment to Ellen Johnson D’Evelin, the “younger sister” and ward of Mary D’Evelin Franklin, William’s wife. “Younger sister” belongs in quotation marks because, although that is what the Franklins called her, the women’s names tell a different story: The girl was probably not Mary’s sister but her illegitimate daughter; otherwise they would simply have called her the child of Mary’s former marriage. If Mary had a sister, she would be named Ellen Johnson, not D’Evelin. Ellen was the same age as Sally’s daughter Elizabeth Bache, with whom she corresponded, and was almost eighteen when she went to bed with Temple.
As soon as this liaison was known it must have been the cause of terrible strife in the house on Norton Street, and scandal when the girl stole away to Temple’s lavish rooms in Manchester Square. She became pregnant with his child in the summer of 1797. No one could prevail upon the profligate American to marry the Irish Ellen D’Evelin, who had no dowry to recommend her. Temple closed his house in London and moved to Paris soon before the baby’s birth. William wrote that this rift caused “more trouble of mind than I had ever before experienced,” echoing his father’s words to him in 1784.
The baby, christened Ellen Franklin, was born on April 7, 1798. What is most remarkable is that the child’s mother, Mary D’Evelin’s sister, or daughter, vanished from history without a trace—not a tombstone, letter, or diary entry. This brings a gothic chill to the record. She became as invisible as those other unwed mothers, the sad women who brought William Franklin and Temple Franklin into the world. But here is a disturbing difference: Those mistresses of the 1730s and 1760s were anonymous before and after giving birth to Franklins. Ellen Johnson D’Evelin was not only known by name, she was a family member.
So what became of Ellen D’Evelin, Ellen Franklin’s mother? There is no one to tell us. Perhaps she returned to Ireland to begin life anew, under an assumed name. One thing is certain: Secrets of this nature beget more secrets and trouble in a family. In this case the chronicler is obliged to relate the mysterious circumstances of Ellen’s disappearance to the dreadful demise of Mrs. Franklin. In her fifties, William’s second wife lost her mind. Illnesses real and imaginary racked her frame and eventually confined her to her bed. The king’s best physicians could do nothing for her. Refusing food and drink, Mary was kept alive for a while by force-feeding. At last, on September 3, 1811, she succumbed to whatever demons had been pursuing her.
“Happiness has received a stroke which cannot be remedied at my advanced period of life, and I must resign myself for the remaining days of my existence to that solitary state which is most repugnant to my nature,” William Franklin wrote to his cousin Jonathan. After Mary’s death, Temple wrote to his father expressing his renewed interest in publishing Benjamin’s works and visiting London. He was living beyond his means in a house in Paris and another in the country with his mistress Hannah Collyer. William said he would be happy to see Temple whenever it was convenient; he hoped “to bury in oblivion all past transactions,” and desired that if Temple would not leave Paris and live in London he might at least manage a visit to his truly affectionate parent. He told Jonathan Williams he could not bear the thought of dying at odds with his son. But he was never to see him again. Although Temple visited London from time to time, he did not call upon his father.
Still, William was not alone. He had Ellen, an intelligent and charming girl, age thirteen when his wife died. She reminded him of his father, and William said she “showed every promise of making a fine woman.” He was right. She had been raised in the Franklins’ house in Marylebone as their daughter, and was sent to a finishing school thirty miles from London. During the last years of his life, Ellen Franklin cared for her grandfather with all the tenderness and devotion that Sally had reserved for her father. William enjoyed life until the end, reporting to Jonathan Williams in July 1812 that his health—considering the fact that he was eighty-one—was generally good, and that he retained, praise God, his usual flow of spirits. His hobbyhorse during the nineteenth century was the tantalizing pursuit of lands, interest, and debts in relation to his real estate adventures in America. He engaged lawyers including Aaron Burr to bring suit against the Croghan estate for £12,000 owed him. It was never quite clear to anyone that the effort was futile. When William was too feeble to put pen to paper, young Ellen served as his amanuensis, not much caring what came of the knotty lawsuit, wanting only to be of service to her surrogate father.
She was richly rewarded. William left Ellen the lion’s share of his estate, real property and investments probably valued at £20,000 sterling at the time of his death, November 16, 1813. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Pancras Old Church in London. Like his father before him, William left his son nothing but invalid titles to land and the right to claim uncollectible debts. He did not curse Temple. Ellen’s fortune he put into a trust, and when she came of age it made an attractive dowry for officer Capel Hanbury of the Royal Scots. They were married in June 1818. In 1820, Ellen gave birth to Maria, the first and last legitimate child to be born in that crooked branch of the family tree. They lived in Nice, in the Mediterranean sunshine.
THE WORST FATE THAT could have attended the papers of Benjamin Franklin—after being abandoned by Joseph Galloway—was for them to fall into the hands of Temple Franklin. Greed ought to have served him better, for they were priceless. He wandered and delayed publishing the Autobiography for nearly thirty years while a dozen unauthorized versions were published lucratively in French and English. When he finally published his edition in London in 1818, the Autobiography included only three of the four parts. Temple had somehow been duped into trading the original complete manuscript in his grandfather’s hand for some other copy that comprised only the first three quarters. Not for fifty years would readers see the book in all its glory, when the diplomat John Bigelow purchased the holograph manuscript in France and published an accurate text in Philadelphia.
As for the rest of Franklin’s letters and writings? Before Temple left America, he hastily went through his grandfather’s papers and grabbed twenty-five hundred pages that seemed interesting to him. The greatest part of the archive, fifteen thousand letters at least, were nailed up in hogshead barrels for his friend George Fox to store in a garret over his stable in Champlost, outside Philadelphia, as collateral for a loan. Years passed, the debt went unpaid, and Temple bequeathed the papers to Fox in his will. They meant nothing to Fox or his family. They gave some away as party favors. As late as 1862, Fox’s daughter Elizabeth ordered that the barrels of letters should be sold to the mill for old paper. One keg had gone forever and others were being rolled out the door when a visitor asked what was going on and put a stop to it. What remained of the American archive landed, eventually, in the vaults of the American Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania.
The papers Temple took with him to London he culled, publishing half of them, haphazardly edited, in several volumes between 1808 and 1819 in London and Philadelphia. Subsequently the manuscripts were held by Temple’s London banker, Herries and Company. In 1840, an anonymous fellow lodger of the late Temple Franklin tried to sell the Franklin papers to the British Museum. When asked how they had come into his possession, all he would say is that he had discovered bound parcels of them on the top shelf of a tailor’s shop in St. James’s Street, near Herries’s bank. The innocent tailor had been using this sturdy rag stock to cut shirt patterns. There was one sheet of foolscap snipped neatly into the shape of a sleeve.
No buyer stepped up to purchase the collection until 1850, when the insightful American book dealer Henry Stevens bought the entire lot, more than two thousand pages, for an undisclosed sum. In 1881, Stevens sold it to the U.S. State Department for $35,000 ($850,000 today).
William Temple Franklin died in Paris in 1823, at sixty-three years of age, penniless, nineteen days after marrying his patient mistress, Mrs. Collyer. She was the only woman he did not disappoint in that way; but he left his widow nothing but those papers deposited with the London bank, which she clearly mismanaged even worse than he had.
He is buried in the ornate garden cemetery of Perè Lachaise beneath an expensive obelisk.