Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own WritingsBruce, Wiliam Cabell
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Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings
Bruce, Wiliam Cabell
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
And that was certainly something worth noting about a servant who could
play upon the French horn.
But it is of Goody Smith, the servant in the Franklin household at
Philadelphia, whose judgment was invoked upon the failure of Deborah to
answer her husband's letter from Easton, that mention is most often made in
the portions of Franklin's letters to his wife which relate to servants. In
a letter to Deborah from Easton, he expresses his obligations to Goody
Smith for remembering him and sends his love to her. In another letter to
Deborah, when he was on his way to Williamsburg in Virginia, he says, "my
Duty to Mother, and love to Sally, Debby, Gracey, &c., not forgetting the
Goodey." Subsequently, when in England, he tells Deborah:
I have order'd two large print Common Prayer Books to
be bound on purpose for you and Goodey Smith; and that
the largeness of the Print may not make them too
bulkey, the Christnings, Matrimonies, and everything
else that you and she have not immediate and constant
Occasion for, are to be omitted. So you will both of
you be repriev'd from the Use of Spectacles in Church a
little longer.
In another letter from England, Franklin mentions that he sends Deborah a
pair of garters knit by Polly Stevenson who had also favored him with a
pair. "Goody Smith may, if she pleases," he adds, "make such for me
hereafter, and they will suit her own fat Knees. My Love to her." And love
to her he sends again when he hears that she is recovering from an illness.
Franklin likewise refers several times in his letters to Deborah to
another servant, John, who accompanied him on his return to England in
1764, but the behavior of this servant seems to have been too
unexceptionable for him to be a conspicuous figure in his master's letters.
They were evidently a kind master and mistress, Franklin and Deborah. "I am
sorry for the death of your black boy," he wrote to her on one occasion
from London, "as you seem to have had a regard for him. You must have
suffered a good deal in the fatigue of nursing him in such a distemper."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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