Benjamin Franklin’s Arrival in France from Chapter 27:

The trip was not life threatening, but it was very difficult. To fend off the cold Franklin wore the fur cap he used during the Canada expedition and the boils that tormented him during and after that trip returned. His quarters were cramped and the food terrible, salt beef and ship’s biscuits. The weather was not severe but their safety was threatened on several occasions when they were forced to elude British warships. The same features of the sleek, full-rigged Reprisal that allowed escape from their pursuers permitted a very rapid crossing. Even so, their time at sea exceeded four weeks and Franklin was weak when they finally dropped anchor in Quiberon Bay on the south coast of Brittany.
 
Within just a few days of land the Captain, Lambert Wickes, asked Franklin’s permission to take a prize. A merchantman had been spotted and Wickes knew he and his crew of one hundred could easily take her. Congress had ordered him to avoid enemy contact of any kind but since they were near shore and no other vessels were in the vicinity he wanted to take a chance. After seeing how expertly the crew had performed during the crossing Franklin agreed the risk was minimal and he gave his consent. The British vessel, the Success, was a brigantine carrying wood and wine. It was bound for Cork from Bordeaux and surrendered without a fight. Later the same day they took another British vessel, La Vigne, a brig from Hull, laden with flaxseed and alcohol.
 
Captain Wickes planned on taking the river Loire to Nantes but after waiting four days for a favorable wind Franklin left the Reprisal and landed at the fishing village of Auray. From there they traveled in a broken down carriage roughly eighty miles to Nantes through weather so cold and harsh that Franklin continued to wear his unstylish but warm fur cap. The driver warned them bandits often harassed travelers on their route and several were robbed and murdered only two weeks before. Temple may have pretended to be unafraid at hearing this but little Benny must have scooted closer to his grandfather.
 
Their journey was difficult, the road rough and the air cold and damp. The people of Auray knew nothing of Franklin and treated him accordingly but the populace of Nantes included champions of America’s struggle for freedom and they greeted Franklin enthusiastically. He had hoped to rest in Nantes but the people were too excited. A crowd headed by Monsieur Penet, a commercial agent who had met Franklin in Philadelphia, greeted the new emissary and the boys as they entered the town and escorted them to the home of an associate, Monsieur Gruel. A lavish and well attended dinner was held that evening and for the next week Franklin received a steady stream of gentlemen and ladies anxious to express their approval of the American cause and to hear the voice of one of its founders.

The news of Franklin’s presence in France quickly reached London and all the other European capitals. Speculation about his reasons for coming to Europe varied. George III was convinced Franklin was the principle proponent of America’s insurrection and he had his paid writers spread the word Franklin left America to escape the rebellion’s imminent collapse. Franklin’s friends in England responded immediately. Edmund Burke wrote, “I never will believe that he is going to conclude a long life, which has brightened every hour that it has continued, with so foul and dishonorable a flight.” A pragmatic Lord Rockingham observed that the presence of Franklin in Paris was “much more than a balance for the few additional acres which the English had gained by the conquest of Manhattan Island.”
 
Franklin’s reception at Nantes was a continuation of a cult of personality that began with the translation of his Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America. The general public may not have been aware of the specifics of that scientific treatise but the kite experiment and the American who conducted it fascinated them. When Jefferson arrived in 1785 to take over the French mission he said there is “more respect and veneration attached to the character of Dr. Franklin in France than to that of any other person, foreign or native” but he was popular in France before his arrival in 1776. Barbe Dubourg translated The Way to Wealth, which was immensely popular. Poor Richard, known in France as Bon Homme Richard, was very widely read and generally admired as not only a proponent of the philosophies expounded by Voltaire and Rousseau but a living embodiment of them. Voltaire described Pennsylvania as an ideal society and Rousseau romanticized about the wilderness and primitive man. Neither Frenchman presented an accurate image of America and its people but their descriptions were exactly what America’s first ambassador needed. Franklin’s image as the noble peasant was the perfect counter to a haughty and powdered English king and his ambassador to France, Lord Stormont.
 
Franklin realized the affect his appearance had on the people and he used it to his advantage immediately. He continued to wear his fur cap rather than a wig in Nantes, first because of the cold and then because of a recurring skin condition similar to psoriasis that plagued him through much of his life. By the time he reached Paris on December 21st the press had noted, in glowing reports, his rustic, yet endearing dress and the ladies had even gone so far as to create a hairstyle that resembled the cap, the “Coiffure a la Franklin”. The hat became a symbol and Franklin’s glasses, brown suit, and clean, white linen completed the image. His spoken French was imperfect but for many it was a flaw that only increased his appeal. His manners contributed to the misimpression that Franklin was a Quaker, a mistake he was not inclined to correct. One Frenchmen wrote, “Everything in him announces the simplicity and innocence of primitive morals… Such a person was made to excite the curiosity of Paris.”
 
The cause of liberty had already excited many in Europe. The French were particularly moved by the events and passions of the American revolution and the “The virtuous young King”, Louis XVI, who had come to power three months after the episode in the Cockpit in January of 1774, gave his people great hopes about their own liberties. Benjamin Franklin became the hub around which an international melodrama would spin.
 

© Robert A. Crimmins, Felton, Delaware, USA