I hope my daughter continues well. My blessing to her. I
shall soon, God willing, have the Pleasure of seeing you, intending
homewards in May next. I shall only wait the Arrival of the April
Pacquet with the accounts, that I may settle them here before I go.
I beg you will not fail of forwarding them by that Opportunity,
which will greatly oblige.
Dear Friend
Yours most affectionately
It is to be observed of all these letters that, like the original letter
of Foxcroft, they are entirely serious. They are business letters. They
are not letters of amusement and pleasure, in which Franklin might joke
and laugh with a young girl and in sport call her his daughter. They are
not addressed to the woman in question but to her husband, and at the
close of long details about business matters he simply says “give my
love to my daughter,” or he refers to her, as in the letter next to the
last, as about to have another child. Read in connection with Foxcroft’s
original letter, they form very strong proof that Franklin believed Mrs.
Foxcroft to be his daughter.
But the reviewer says that Mr. Fisher notes in two places that women
correspondents in writing to Franklin called him father and signed
themselves “your daughter.” Mr. Fisher notes on page 332 the letter of a
girl written to Franklin in broken French and English, in which she
begins by calling him “My dear father Americain,” and signs herself
“your humble servant and your daughter J. B. J. Conway.” The letter is
obviously childish and sportive. We do not find the other instance of a
similar letter to which the reviewer alludes. The Conway letter is such
a frivolous one that it amounts to nothing as proof to overcome the
serious, solemn statements by Franklin and Foxcroft in their letters. A
light-minded French girl calling Franklin her father is very different
from serious, business-like statements by Franklin saying that a certain
woman was his daughter.
The reviewer goes on to say that “a little more research would have
shown him [Mr. Fisher] letters of Franklin couched in the same parental
terms.” The meaning of this is presumably that Franklin was in the habit
of calling the young women he corresponded with his daughters. This,
however, it will be observed, is quite a different matter from
Franklin’s writing to a husband and sending love to the husband’s wife
as his daughter. But there are some letters to young girls on which a
reckless, slap-dash reviewer would be likely to base the statement that
Franklin habitually called women his daughters. Let us look into these
letters and see what they are.
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