Mark André Singer, aka Citoyen Singer, reviews Stacy Schiff's new bio of Ben Franklin's years in Paris

Who’s your favorite Franklin? The plump, long-haired, self-taught scientist flying his kite-with-a-key-in-a-storm? Or perhaps the thrifty, wealthy and wise author of his hugely popular Autobiography? Or, mayhaps, the comic voice lurking behind his compendia of oft-quoted maxims and witticisms in Poor Richard’s Almanac?

If you would not be forgotten As soon as you are dead and rotten
Either write things worth reading Or do things worth the writing.

Bostonians are justly proud of their favorite native son, the self-made man who began as a humble printer’s apprentice and then, with pluck and ingenuity, boot-strapped himself to become a printer, publisher, homespun philosopher, best-selling author, internationally lionized scientist and revolutionary. Philadelphians revere Franklin’s civic innovations: America’s first lending library (est. 1731, viz: www.librarycompany.org), functional fire department, and dependable postal service. In fact, as Americans, we are all largely indebted to this most genial Founding Father who edited Tom Jefferson’s Declaration, signing it with admirably crafted penmanship. And even if none of the above, who does not welcome Franklin’s avuncular face on the $100 bill?

But what about the senior citizen Ben Franklin à Paris from 1776 to 1785? Thanks to the abundant biographical skills of Stacy Schiff, who won a Pulitzer in 2000 for Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov): Portrait of a Marriage, and critical acclaim for the meticulously researched Saint-Exupery: A Biography (1994), we now have Monsieur Franklin, diplomate extraordinaire, fully fleshed out in: A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (Henry Holt, 2005). Schiff has conducted extensive original research (covering “230 years of documentation”) at numerous research libraries and archives in the U.S. and Europe to uncover new information about this less well-known period of Franklin’s illustrious career. She has also mined the 37 annotated volumes of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Yale University Press, 1959-2003).

A Great Improvisation is a great read. Schiff lucidly unfolds the people, places and events during the eight years Franklin lobbied for the military aid the American “insurgents” [sic] desperately needed: “nine months into the war, the country was nearly destitute of gunpowder.” The grand sweep of history is rendered in lively, engaging prose masterfully integrated with the colorful personal narratives of a disparate “Cast of Characters” such as the irrepressibly pro-American gadfly playwright Beaumarchais; the redoubtable Admiral D’Estaing; Madame Helvétius, one of the Enlightenment’s foremost socialites; the dashing, idealistic Marquis de Lafayette; Antoine Lavoisier, discoverer of oxygen; Le Compte de Vergennes, Louis XVI’s minister of foreign affairs “known at Versailles for qualities that did not endear him there: thrift, industry, prudence, gravity”; and, naturellement, America’s first international celebrity, wearing his trademark marten fur hat in lieu of a powdered wig:

“America was six months old; Franklin was seventy years her senior. And the fate of that infant republic was, to a significant extent, in his hands. He sailed to France not for self-emancipation, as Americans have since, but for that of his country. Congress had declared independence without any viable means of achieving it; the American colonies were without munitions, money, credit, common cause…[Franklin] was charged with appealing to a monarchy for assistance in establishing a republic. In many ways he was splendidly suited to what would prove the greatest gamble of his life…A master of the oblique approach, a dabbler in shades of gray, Franklin was a natural diplomat, genial and ruthless. He was enough accustomed to the foibles of man that he found no culture entirely foreign.” (pp. 1-2)

Readers will also find a wealth of fascinating passages about the social, cultural and quotidian conditions of late 18th century Paris:

“The Paris into which Franklin rode in 1776 was at once the most opulent city in the world and the Calcutta of its day…The visitor who ventured on into the heart of Paris—confined in the 1770’s to an area a third its size today—discovered a very different city, a dim, bustling, steaming, fetid, brimming, deafening madness…The streets amounted to pungent rivers of filth, their mud so acidic that it rotted through a dress or a stocking in the course of an evening. It gave rise to a herd of young men who threw themselves on the spattered pedestrian with their brushes, a breed so agile they doubled as theatrical stunt men.” (pp. 45-46)

As we approach the tri-centennial of Franklin’s birth (1706), we can expect many more books and articles, but few are likely to feature the superlative work Ms. Schiff has proffered in A Great Improvisation. Merci, et chapeau Stacy

Books by Stacy Schiff:

A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America
by: Schiff, Stacy
2005/04 ISBN:0805066330 Hardcover
$27.50 Not Yet Published

Vera: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov
by: Schiff, Stacy
2000/04 ISBN:0375755349 Paperback
$14.95