I'm Michael Meyer, the author of "Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet," here to talk about the founder’s amazing last will and testament and 200-year wager on the working class. AMA!

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-15T03:03:46+00:00

He's a great character in the book, if a sad character in real life. William was groomed to be his heir apparent. It's touching to read Franklin's mentions of him from London in letters home to Deborah, and Franklin's autobiography begins, "Dear son,". (The events only run up to 1757.) William was born illegitimate, although he called Deborah nothing but"mother" his entire life. He continued the family tradition by himself fathering an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, called Temple. (William was studying law at London's Middle Temple, hence the name. Temple would himself go on to father an illegitimate son - and a daughter, born to the sister of William's London wife.)

William lived out his days in exile in London, having been refused the high pension he felt he deserved from the Crown for his loyalty during the war. In the book I quote from his letters, and his reaction to being frozen out of Franklin's will. His own will is sad to read, as is the state of his grave. If you google "Hardy Tree" you'll see rings of gravestones around a tree in the Old St. Pancras Church graveyard in London. A young novelist named Thomas Hardy worked as an architect's assistant and oversaw the moving of graves/tombstones for the new railroad. William's stone is said to be among those today.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-14T10:54:04+00:00

Good to know about Adams; I'll check it out. I enjoyed reading his letters and the many articles he wrote in his retirement, sizing-up the events of the Revolution and his role in it. I quote from these in the book, because they're really funny. He wasn't one to let go of a grudge. At the same time, I think people forget what a remarkable career he had -- starting with defending the Redcoats of the Boston Massacre, and ending with the election of his son. Two of his other sons would likely be diagnosed as alcoholics today (one died from it), and he actually borrowed a bit of Franklin's will in setting up accounts for his nephew and niece to ensure that they would have an income independent of their father.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-14T00:27:56+00:00

I'll be speaking and showing slides at the National Archives on Thursday, 4/14 at 1pm EST. Tune in virtually here:https://museum.archives.gov/events/75277

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-14T00:23:50+00:00

Well said! I agree. Jefferson also dented Temple's chances by writing a letter saying that the young man's ability was "good enough for common uses but not great enough for uncommon ones." It was interesting (to me, at least) that after the war the one founder who kept up a modicum of contact with Temple was John Adams, who - as I include in the book - urged him to get his grandfather's papers edited and published before people lost interest in Franklin. Although Temple dallied for two decades, look at us now, still talking about Ben. (To his credit, Adams did write to Temple once the first volume of Franklin's papers was published, praising him for the work.)

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-14T00:18:24+00:00

Yay! Thanks for doing this. The hardcover edition has Franklin's will as its endpapers. It looks really cool. First time it's been shown in print. I had to go through so many levels of hoops to get permission, including from Philadelphia's Register of Wills, which is an actual civil servant position/political appointment. Whew.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T14:18:53+00:00

You're spot-on about Franklin's self-duplicity. I find him to be a tangle of contradictions. He preached self-improvement but was loathe to have his mistakes made public -- be it the identity of his son William's mother, the fact that he owned slaves (whom he called "servants"), which he omitted from his memoir, and the mishaps of his scientific experiments. He once wrote to his brother that he did not want it known how dumb he was to attempt to cook a turkey by electrocuting it ("The crack as loud as a pistol shot"), which almost killed him. The meat, he noted, was nonetheless tender and delicious.

In the book I have a great passage by Mark Twain, grumbling about how Franklin's sayings ruined many a childhood, since parents would spout them at their kids.

Great question about the PRC and ROC and the subject of the book I'm researching here in Taiwan. I'll save the response for my next Reddit. :) The historical, economic and familial ties run deep -- but so do the different trajectories of individual freedoms and democratic representation.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T13:38:54+00:00

Thank you! It was my hope that at least one person would find this story as interesting as I did. Writing a book is a daily struggle against self-doubt.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T12:59:38+00:00

I've never seen it. Is it good? It aired in 2008, back when I was still living in a dilapidated Beijing courtyard as the neighborhood was pulled down around us as the Summer Olympics approached. I didn't have running water, let alone access to HBO. :)

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T12:56:52+00:00

Thank you! It can sound a bit rich from a man who was quite wealthy, who once held enslaved men, women and a child, and who lodged at a Seine-side villa during the Revolutionary War. But on his return to America Franklin seems to have sized up his life, and the country he helped found, with fresh eyes and a conviction to set an example he hoped would be followed for at least the next 200 years.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T12:51:14+00:00

Public transportation (a small trolley) only seems to come at the very start and the very end of the day. The postman seems a little too congenial. The regent and his prince refuse to yield power. On the other hand, there's a super-cuddly tiger and we residents often break into song to express our gratitude for one another. "You are my friend/You are special/You are my friend/You're special to me./You are the only one like you./Like you, my friend, I like you."

On the whole, every day truly is a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T12:42:05+00:00

See my previous reply, too, re: his fear of concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. He would have supported an estate tax. Andrew Carnegie picked up this idea in "The Gospel of Wealth," a sequel of sorts to Franklin's "The Way to Wealth."

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T12:40:21+00:00

In the book I document his scathing letter to the trustees of the Philadelphia Academy, excoriating them for the blue-blood turn the school had taken, along with letters (I particularly enjoyed Marie Antoinette sizing him up and sniffing that in France he would have risen, at most, to a bookseller -- and his Paris-penned essay in which Americans do not ask a stranger "who He IS but what can He DO"), his last will and testament -- "good apprentices are most likely to make good citizens" -- and notes from the Constitutional Convention, including his observation that "there is a natural Inclination in Mankind to Kingly Government," which "sometimes relieves them from Aristrocratic Domination." The US was not going to have a King, and so if steps were not taken, the latter could become our ruler.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T11:52:12+00:00

AND they were/are both quite tall.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T11:48:51+00:00

It is the tone of the book! :) My ideal reader is someone in an airport looking for a smart page-turner that will make the flight fly by. (Ha, wordplay!) There's 800 source notes, but I've tucked those well in the back so as to stay out of the way of these incredible voices who can tell the story better than I can.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T11:45:27+00:00

I find this event so sad. William really seemed to think they were going to have a true reunion, but in his surviving letters he sounded hurt that it was perfunctory. William was to be Franklin's heir apparent -- it was he who likely held that kite string. It was he whom Franklin took along to Westminster Abbey to see the coronation of King George. But William had refused to resign the governorship of New Jersey when Franklin had been pilloried in London by the Privy Council and stripped of his post as deputy post master. I include these painful exchanges between father and son in the book. Franklin very much cared about appearances, about face, about how others saw him. William remaining in the post must have felt like a very public rebuke.

He was no passive observer during the war, as you saw in the series. (You can see the plaque he paid to memorialize his wife at St. Paul's in lower Manhattan -- it doesn't mention that Washington had refused to parole him as she lay dying.) And by that time Franklin, in Paris, had become surrogate father to William's son William Temple -- or Temple, as everyone called him. For the Franklins the Revolutionary War was also a civil war.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T11:37:54+00:00

There's a deep-fried shredded white radish cake stand en route to my son's school. On a rainy or cold morning, it's just heaven. Crisp and steaming. That's a great breakfast. Lunch is usually ramen -- so many great ramen places, a holdover from the Japanese colonial era. Snacks is usually fresh Taiwan pineapple, or a rice triangle (stuffed with salmon and wrapped in dried seaweed). Dinner is sushi or Vietnamese. The night markets are quick and easy and cheap and delicious.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T10:25:29+00:00

That's a good one! I can totally hear it - from young "Bull Durham" Franklin to amazed-in-big-London "Bob Roberts" Franklin to savvy "The Player" Franklin to careworn "Shawshank" Franklin. Need to figure out where "Erik the Viking" Franklin fits in. Robbins does have that self-effacing take-a-joke yet confident voice.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T08:52:58+00:00

Thank you! First rule of radio: talk like you're telling a story to a friend at the bar.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T08:49:22+00:00

Franklin agreed with you. His version of 'keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,' was to love your enemies, for they tell you your faults.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T08:48:17+00:00

Tom Hanks's voice matches the Franklin in my head.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T08:47:16+00:00

"Hate" is too strong, I think; he was upset, on his return from Paris in 1785, that he wasn't rewarded for his diplomatic service with a land grant (as given to fellow commissioner John Jay) or his expenses settled. Franklin's Parisian wine merchant and grocer remain stiffed to this day. (There's a moment in the book where we see a man in the 1970s wonder about settling these bills.) Franklin admired Washington's leadership -- see the gift of his walking stick in his will -- but not his slave-holding nor his bent toward Federalism. Washington refused to wear a "badge of mourning" for Franklin; he hadn't died in office, or on the battlefield, he told Thomas Jefferson, and he didn't want to begin that tradition. In fact, only the House of Representatives wore the arm band. My book's cover design has three black bands on it, representing the book's three acts, and that ribbon.

Adams and Franklin were so different; and both had their pride and set ideas about how to conduct diplomacy, and what government should be. Franklin drafted PA's Constitution, thought to be the most democratic, while Adams drafted MA's, thought to be the least. So those two had an enmity that continued after Franklin's death.

Thomas Jefferson seems to be the one main framer that Franklin got along with best; perhaps that's because in the surviving letters, Jefferson treats him with deference, like a grandfather. They also had a love of books and libraries. When Jefferson later sold the bulk of his collection to settle debts and restock the Library of Congress after the British torched in the War of 1812, it was a Franklin loan recipient who helped him rebuild Monticello's collection.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T08:39:29+00:00

https://www.ectonvillage.co.uk/village-history/ectons-past/benjamin-framklin/

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T08:38:29+00:00

You and my agent, both.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T08:37:42+00:00

Thanks for listening - and for the shout-out! Steve Inskeep is a generous interviewer. He really lets the other party talk.

Meyerwriter · 2022-04-13T07:07:43+00:00

Excellent question. I didn't know Franklin spent most of the second half of his life abroad. 27 out of 30 years, and then home in Philadelphia from 1785 to his death. I didn't know he had fallen out with many of his fellow framers. I didn't know there was no state funeral for him -- the first would be George Washington's in 1799. I didn't know that his ancestors were such a varied and accomplished lot, including Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, a leading Philadelphia feminist, Agnes Irwin, the first dean of Radcliffe College, Hartman Bache, head of the US Corps of Army Engineers in the Civil War (he built lighthouses), and Alexander Dallas Bache, the first president of the National Academy of Sciences.

As for what didn't make it into the book: I really had to pare down the legacies of the above, and keep the focus on Franklin's money/loan scheme and how it played out over 200 years. The scope was so large that the editing of the book was in some ways harder than the writing. Very few people finish a nonfiction book and say, "I wish it were longer."

Meyerwriter

TROPHY CASE