Summary
During this time Franklin continues to court Miss Read. He also makes several good friends: Charles Osborne, Joseph Watson, and James Ralph walk and talk with him about what they read. They compose poetry and read it to each other. Ralph became a good writer, Watson died young in his arms, and Osborne became a lawyer and also died, promising he’d tell Franklin what the beyond was like, but never doing so.
Franklin prepares to travel to London. Ralph decides to go with him and Franklin later learns this is to escape his wife and child. Sir William promises to send letters with Franklin to introduce him to people in London, and the captain assures him the letters are on board. Unfortunately none of them is there, and Franklin starts to realize one cannot depend on Sir William. He wanted to please everyone and gave expectations that he could not fulfill.
Ralph and Franklin live together. Ralph has trouble finding employment but Franklin immediately starts at Palmer’s, a famous printinghouse. The two young men enjoy carousing and spending money in the city; Franklin cannot afford to pay his passage back.
Franklin writes and gains the notice of eminent men. Ralph moves out to live with a young milliner. Over the years Franklin supports the two with money, but after he flirts with the young woman, Ralph becomes angry and the friendship is severed.
Franklin moves to another printinghouse, Watts. He initially has trouble befriending the other men there because they all drink copious amounts of beer and he does not, preferring water. They carry out mischief against him, but eventually they come to respect him.
Franklin takes new lodgings with an elderly woman and enjoys engaging in conversation with her. Another elderly maiden lady lives there as well, and Franklin hears of her days as a nun and how now a priest comes every day to confess her. Franklin wonders what she would have to confess, being a veritable hermit, and the landlady says it would be vain thoughts.
Franklin particularly enjoys the company of Wygate, a young man who works for Watts, is well-read, and knows Latin. They swim together all the time and almost decide to travel on the continent together, but Denham, his Quaker merchant friend, encourages Franklin to return to America. There he plans to open a store and wants Franklin to be a clerk. Franklin is excited to do this, realizing how much he misses his family. He thinks he is leaving printing forever and is fine with it.
Before Franklin departs, a wealthy man, Sir William Wyndham, summons him. He asks if Franklin might want to open a swimming school, but Franklin is already set up to leave. Overall, he spent eighteen months in London. He spent a lot of money but made a handful of brilliant and worthwhile friends.
On the sea voyage Franklin works on his plan for his future conduct in life. Arriving in Philadelphia he hears Keith is no longer governor. Miss Read has married someone else, but that man left her and she does not consider them married because it is said he had another wife.
Franklin works for Denham, whom he loves and respects as a father. Sadly, though, Denham sickens and passes away. Franklin can only return to Keimer’s business. There he makes a handful of new friends: Hugh Meredith, a reader but a drunk; Stephen Potts, a country lad, idle but witty; John, a wild Irishman; George Webb, an Oxford scholar; and David Harry, a country apprentice. Franklin realizes he was only rehired so he can train these young men and Keimer can then fire him, but he works cheerfully nonetheless. After John leaves everyone gets along even better. They learn more from Franklin than Keimer, and he begins to learn everything about the business.
Over time Franklin sees that the other hands are becoming quite competent. He and Keimer quarrel, and Franklin walks out. Meredith comes to him and suggests that they partner; his father is a great admirer of Franklin and will front money for their own shop. They can buy out Keimer, who is in debt and will soon fail. Franklin is thrilled and agrees. He even goes back to Keimer’s with this secret after the master apologizes for his sharp words.
During this time Franklin begins to leave behind his old religious faith and becomes a Deist, convinced by the arguments thrust into his hands to putatively cure him of his doubts. In terms of his personal behavior, he becomes convinced “Truth, Sincerity & Integrity in Dealings between Man & Man, were of the utmost Importance to the Felicity of Life, and I form’d written Resolutions…to practice them ever while I lived” (57). Franklin and Meredith finally leave Keimer and find a house near the market. They rent part of it to the Godfrey family and begin setting up their business.
Franklin forms a club called the Junto with some of his acquaintances. They debate and discuss things in the search for truth, never desiring victory or to be disputatious.
Franklin and Meredith work very hard at printing, beginning to undertake tasks such as the history of the Quakers. People begin to note their industriousness and they develop a good reputation even though they are not fully devoted to shop business yet. Franklin decides he wants to publish a little paper, but Keimer beats him to it. However, he sells it off to Franklin not long after.
Franklin notes that Meredith is not a very good partner, but he tries to make the best of it.
The papers put out by Franklin are better than any others and they earn a lot of subscribers due to their incisive and insightful articles. Franklin works on his debt to Vernon. He also dissolves his partnership with Meredith in an amicable fashion in order to secure more financial backing.
In 1729 there is an outcry for more paper money and Franklin earns more of a reputation when he writes a piece on the necessity of this currency. Andrew Hamilton, the famous lawyer and friend of Franklin, gets him a job printing the New Castle paper money as well as other laws and votes. Franklin starts a stationer’s shop and works to pay off his debt. He is a plain dresser, does not engage in idle pursuits, and is seen as “an industrious thriving young man” (66).
Keimer, meanwhile, loses his business and goes to live in Barbados. Franklin is initially worried about his successor, David Harry, but the young man is dissolute and poor with money; he travels to Barbados as well. Franklin now has no real rival, but Bradford has better advertisements than he does.
Franklin almost marries Godfrey’s daughter, but she does not have enough money for the match. The Godfreys depart in a huff and Franklin decides to take no more boarders. He begins to think about taking a wife, tiring of his “Intrigues with low Women” (68). He reestablishes contact with Miss Read and the two renew their love and marry on September 1st, 1730.
At this time Franklin founds the city’s first subscription library, which proves immensely successful. These libraries improved the learning of all men and, in his opinion, “perhaps have contributed in some degree to the Stand so generally made throughout the Colonies in Defense of their Privileges” (69).
Analysis
This last section of Part I details Franklin’s life as a young man in both Philadelphia and London. He learns to avoid “low women” and bad friends, to pay off debts he owes, to control his spending, and to cultivate relationships with the right sort of people. Perhaps most importantly, he truly learns the value of hard work and industry. His time at Keimer’s, Watts, Denham’s shop, and finally his own printinghouse brings him wealth and an excellent reputation. As he grows older and learns to sublimate baser tendencies and perfect his virtues (see Analysis 3) he becomes the Benjamin Franklin whom history lauds.
Work is perhaps one of the most salient characteristics in the entire text; the words “work" and “business” are used more than one hundred times each. People are identified with their occupation and sometimes little else. Learning to value work above leisure, as Franklin does in Watts, yields many benefits. As critic Suanna Davis writes, “Franklin develops his theme of work through discussion of its difficulties and rewards.” Bad masters and employers can make work arduous; financial carelessness does not lend itself well to success. Taking on a profession one is not suited for, as Franklin observes with the printers, is also a losing battle. By contrast, good employers, like Denham, and partners, like David Hall, can secure that success. Overall, working hard allows someone like Franklin to pull themselves up from an undistinguished, impoverished background.
Franklin’s account of how he is a self-made man has greater import than just being the story of what happened to him as an individual; indeed, as scholar Jennifer Jordan Baker writes, “the Autobiography ultimately operates as a financial instrument–a national letter of credit endorsed by Franklin himself–that attests to the economic promise of America…[it] is representative not as a generic tale of an ordinary American experience but rather a s story of exemplary success that uses Franklin’s experience to advocate, like a celebrity endorsement, the possibilities of American life.” America’s credibility is enhanced as Franklin’s individual credibility heightens. Over time he uses his own name to vouch for projects, knowing that it has become precious currency. For example, the library he mentions in this section will come back in later ones, joined by a hospital, fire department, improved city watch, militia, and more. He will be a spokesman for the country as tensions heat up with Britain; both sides will seek him out because he is revered and reputable. He intertwines doing good with doing well, as well as the public and the private; he ultimately “makes self-promotion and national promotion mutually beneficial.”
This part of the Autobiography not only discusses the things that Franklin wants to pursue/accomplish but also the things he wants to avoid: living a dissolute life and entreating with those “low women.” Franklin does not have much to say about women overall, but in both the penumbras of the text and in others’ accounts of the historical Franklin, it is clear he was very fond of the female sex, both before and after his marriage to Miss Read, but endeavored to control those impulses. In her article on Franklin and Freud, scholar Ada Van Gastel looks at Franklin’s “ideal American” literary construct and what it says about this newly emerging modern society in terms of sex. Freud’s writings in Civilization and its Discontents on the need to sublimate desires manifest themselves in Franklin’s Autobiography. Franklin is all about self-reliance and acquiring control over his life; he also strongly cares about what others think about him. He foregoes any romantic subplot in his narrative, talking about Deborah Read only when it is convenient to the narrative (it is likely that his glimpse of her upon his arrival in Philadelphia was fabricated).
Significantly, the “emotive language” that Franklin uses in the text is never for women: it is only used for his close friends like John Collins. Gastel notes that Franklin moves from talking about the women on the ship to Collins right away and that this may mean “that Franklin uses Collins in his capacity as a ‘Lover of Reading’ to help him sublimate the ill-fated attraction he had felt towards the two ‘Strumpets’.” His language toward Read is cool and lacks intimacy; he lauds her as a helpmate and for her industriousness but evinces no love for her. In fact, he only returns to her after his transaction with the daughter of Mr. Godfrey goes south because she cannot offer enough money. Franklin even says he expects “Money with a Wife” (68), not the other way around.
As Franklin gains in public prominence he reaches the stage where intellectual activity is the most important thing; this is “the final stage in the conquest of instinctual drives…in which the instinctual drives are no longer consciously registered as such.” Franklin is now a model man who has transferred his sexual energy into the oath of intellectual labor; he is a man engaged with socially acceptable and beneficial activities, not those that concern women or sex. As Gastel concludes, “in creating this figure, Franklin thus helped to further the course of sublimation; he helped to further the cause of, what we call, civilization.”
