Franklin meets Voltaire
Philip Martin
Voltaire met Benjamin Franklin on Wednesday, April 29, 1778, at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, the premier intellectual salon in Paris.
John Adams, the future president, who had accompanied Franklin to dinner that evening and on to the gathering, was there to describe it. He recalled that both of the old lions of the Enlightenment—Franklin was 72, Voltaire was 83 with only weeks to live—seemed befuddled by the demand that they embrace.
“Neither of our Philosophers seemed to divine what was wished or expected,” Adams wrote. “They however took each other by the hand. But this was not enough. The clamor continued, until the explanation came out ‘Il faut s’embrasser, a la francoise.’ [You have to kiss, in the French mode].”
At that point, the two old men embraced and kissed each other on both cheeks.
I’m not sure I trust Adams’ account, which makes the meeting seem cute and the principals dotty old fools.
Adams famously grew to dislike—some say hate—Franklin during his sojourn in France. To understand why, we need a little backstory. Adams and Franklin had been friendly, and partnered together on an ill-fated diplomatic mission in 1776 to convince British Admiral Lord Richard Howe to cease hostilities against the revolutionaries. Residual of that adventure is the anecdote of how one night Adams and Franklin were forced to sleep in the same bed, in a tiny room, that Adams recalled was “without a chimney and with only one small window.”
Adams, who sometimes described himself as an invalid, was convinced exposure to cold air caused colds. So at bedtime, he closed the window. Franklin immediately leapt up and opened it, insisting that they would be suffocated. Adams replied that he was afraid of the evening air, a notion Franklin dismissed as superstition. Franklin insisted that if the window were closed, the air would become poisonous.
“I believe you are not familiar with my theory of colds,” Franklin allegedly told Adams. (Though Adams was familiar with Franklin’s theory, he thought it a load of booshwah.)
“The doctor then began a harangue, ” Adams wrote, “upon air and cold and respiration and perspiration, with which I was so amused that I soon fell asleep, and left him and his philosophy together.”
Two years later, Adams declined the chance to join Franklin and Arthur Lee on a diplomatic mission to convince King Louis XVI of France to support the American Revolution. Connecticut businessman Silas Deane was appointed in his place. But upon his arrival in France, Deane began to criticize the spending habits of Franklin (and to some extent Lee). The friction is such that the Continental Congress had to recall Deane and plead with Adams to take his place.
So on Feb. 15, 1778, Adams and his son John Quincy set sail for France aboard the frigate Boston. It was a horrible trip. Adams and his son immediately became sick, and their ship was pursued by three British warships they barely managed to outrun.
They encountered a terrible three-day storm, during which Adams could only hold onto the sides of his bed to keep from being pitched about. He thought he could hear the ship breaking apart—“a constant cracking night and day from 1,000 places in all parts of the ship.”
They ran into another British ship, an armed merchant vessel with the fearsome name Martha. Since the Boston had superior cannonry, the captain elected to engage. The British, realizing their mistake, immediately surrendered. As American Marines assembled on deck, preparing to board the Martha, Adams grabbed a musket. The captain saw him and immediately ordered him back below the decks for his safety.
And when Adams finally arrived in France, he was annoyed by constantly being asked if he were the “famous” Adams. (He wasn’t; his interlocutors were thinking of his second cousin Samuel Adams.)
Adams was often peeved at the attention some of the other founding fathers received; Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, his cousin Sam, and Franklin seemed to occupy a higher tier than Adams, though he’d often been in the same rooms with them at the same times.
More importantly, he was irked that Franklin had already signed a pact with the French; the agreement had been signed on Feb. 6, before Adams even departed the colonies. (Once General Gage defeated the British at Saratoga, the French felt confident in the Americans’ chance.)
It didn’t help that Franklin— then one of the most famous men in the world—was beloved in France. He had affected what Adams considered a ridiculous costume: homespun clothes and a fur hat that played off the stereotype of the American frontiersman.
In France, Franklin was considered a genius, one of the great men of the age. They called him l’ambassador electrique. He was a favorite with the ladies.
The French didn’t know Adams at first. Then he offended them with his nononsense, pedantic manner and inability to speak French, considered the international language of diplomacy. (Adams tried to learn the language while on the voyage. He didn’t bother to hide his disdain for what he saw as the foppery of the French court.)
Adams thought Franklin was enjoying his role a little too much. He disapproved of Franklin’s willingness to go along with French mores and bristled at Franklin’s suggestion that the best way forward diplomatically was for Adams to make friends with Franklin’s social circles. To Adams, Franklin was uncouth, vulgar, pretentious, over the hill and immoral.
He might have been right; the popular image of Benjamin Franklin today is of an irascible cad, a libertine who in another era might have been at home in Hefner’s mansion or Epstein’s plane. But he was also a man of practical accomplishment, a popular scientist who invented useful things like efficient stoves, bifocals and a urinary catheter (to somewhat relieve the agony of his kidney stone-afflicted brother).
Adams was, like most of us, a complex creature deserving of our empathy. David McCullough’s biography—and the HBO mini-series based on it—represent him as fully as we can hope. He was a gifted politician and statesman who by his own admission did not care much for most people.
He was capable of pettiness, as when he described the meeting between Franklin and Voltaire. It was not their first.
On the very day Adams set sail for France, Franklin visited Voltaire in Paris to ask his blessing on a younger relative—most sources say a grandson, though they differ on which one, while some say it was a nephew. They talked about America.
“If I were 40,” Voltaire told Franklin, “I should go and settle in your happy fatherland.”