Franklin’s other great female friend in Paris was Madame Helvétius, the widow of a noted French philosophe. She was a lively, outgoing and free-spirited bohemian who enjoyed projecting an earthy aura even at age 60. Franklin did more than flirt with her; by September of 1779, he was ardently proposing marriage in a way that was more than half-serious but retained enough ironic detachment to preserve their dignities. She led him on lightly. “I hoped that after putting such pretty things on paper,” she scrawled, “you would come and tell me some.” But she declined his marriage proposal, citing her loyalty to her late husband. That prompted Franklin to write her one of his most amusing bagatelles, Elysian Fields, in which he recounted a dream about going to heaven and discussing the matter with her late husband and his late wife, who had themselves married. Praising Madame Helvétius’s looks over those of his departed wife, he suggested they take revenge.
TO MADAME HELVÉTIUS, DECEMBER 7, 1778
The Elysian Fields
Vexed by your barbarous resolution, announced so positively last evening, to remain single all your life in respect to your dear husband, I went home, fell on my bed, and, believing myself dead, found myself in the Elysian Fields.
I was asked if I desired to see anybody in particular. “Lead me to the home of the philosophers.”
“There are two who live nearby in the garden: they are very good neighbors, and close friends of each other.”
“Who are they?”
“Socrates and H———.”
“I esteem them both prodigiously; but let me see first H———, because I understand a little French, but not one word of Greek.”
He received me with great courtesy, having known me for some time, he said, by the reputation I had there. He asked me a thousand things about the war, and about the present state of religion, liberty, and the government in France.
“You ask nothing then of your dear friend Madame H———; nevertheless she still loves you excessively and I was at her place but an hour ago.”
“Ah!” said he, “you make me remember my former felicity. But it is necessary to forget it in order to be happy here. During several of the early years, I thought only of her. Finally I am consoled. I have taken another wife. The most like her that I could find. She is not, it is true, so completely beautiful, but she has as much good sense, a little more of Spirit, and she loves me infinitely. Her continual study is to please me; and she has actually gone to hunt the best Nectar and the best Ambrosia in order to regale me this evening; remain with me and you will see her.”
“I perceive,” I said, “that your old friend is more faithful than you: for several good offers have been made her, all of which she has refused. I confess to you that I myself have loved her to the point of distraction; but she was hard-hearted to my regard, and has absolutely rejected me for love of you.”
“I pity you,” he said, “for your bad fortune; for truly she is a good and beautiful woman and very loveable. But the Abbé de la R———, and the Abbé M———, are they not still sometimes at her home?”
“Yes, assuredly, for she has not lost a single one of your friends.”
“If you had won over the Abbé M———(with coffee and cream) to speak for you, perhaps you would have succeeded; for he is a subtle logician like Duns Scotus or St. Thomas; he places his arguments in such good order that they become nearly irresistible. Also, if the Abbé de la R———had been bribed (by some beautiful edition of an old classic) to speak against you, that would have been better: for I have always observed, that when he advises something, she has a very strong penchant to do the reverse.”
At these words the new Madame H———entered with the Nectar: at which instant I recognized her to be Madame F———, my old American friend. I reclaimed to her. But she told me coldly, “I have been your good wife forty-nine years and four months, nearly a half century; be content with that. Here I have formed a new connection, which will endure to eternity.”
Offended by this refusal of my Eurydice, I suddenly decided to leave these ungrateful spirits, to return to the good earth, to see again the sunshine and you. Here I am! Let us revenge ourselves.