TWENTY DECISIVE BEN

How we recall events—as pleasurable or painful—is determined not by how they begin but how they end. Endings carry greater weight than beginnings, studies have found. Ben Franklin’s fifteen-year mission to London did not end well. Relations between Britain and the colonies went from bad to worse. Parliament passed a series of laws they called the Coercive Acts and the colonists the Intolerable Acts, lest there be any doubt how they felt about them. The British replaced the civilian governor of Massachusetts with a military commander, the tone-deaf and incompetent General Thomas Gage. He closed the port of Boston and established a new quartering act, military speak for “Our smelly soldiers are going to sleep in your house, okay? Good.”

Meanwhile in London, Franklin’s anger management skills were tested. In March 1774 a British general boasted within earshot of Ben that with a thousand British troops he would “go from one end of America to the other and geld all the males, partly by force and partly by a little coaxing.” Ben remained silent, channeling his anger, as usual, with satire, a biting piece called “A Method of Humbling Rebellious American Vassals.”

I try to picture Ben in London that final year. He is sixty-eight years old. He has been humiliated in the Cockpit in full view of Britain’s most powerful officials and stripped of his royal position as deputy postmaster for the colonies. He is persona non grata with most of the political elite. His wife, Deborah, is in poor health. Even the sanctuary that was Number Seven Craven Street is upended. William Hewson, the surgeon (and, now, husband to Polly Stevenson), was dissecting a cadaver when his knife slipped. He developed septicemia and died a few days later. In a letter to Deborah, Ben expressed rare anguish: “They were a happy couple! All their schemes of life are now overthrown!” For once, he distrusted providence.

His son William urged him to return to Philadelphia, but he didn’t and remained in London for more than a year after his dressing down in the Cockpit. Why? Perhaps he couldn’t pry himself from the close friendships he had forged there. Or perhaps those rumored love interests were true. I think there was another, simpler explanation: Ben was stuck. It takes time to process bad news; there’s a lag between information and reaction, and the worse the news, the longer the lag. This lag might look like wasted time, but it is not. The lag is what transforms our half-hearted decisions into firm commitments.

Some biographers portray Franklin as a man without principles, a chameleon changing colors to fit the prevailing mood. But he did possess core beliefs, none more steadfast than his faith in unity. The theme permeates every aspect of his life. Unity featured in his science. There were not two distinct types of electrical currents, he discovered, but a single unified one. Unity was nature’s preference. It features in his politics too. In 1754, more than two decades before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the opening salvo in the Revolutionary War, he drafted a plan for colonial unity, called the Albany Plan. “Britain and her colonies should be considered as one whole, and not as different states with separate interests,” he wrote. He also sketched the now famous “Join or Die” cartoon depicting a dismembered snake, with each inert piece representing a different colony. The Albany Plan was rejected—by both the British and the colonists. Ben, as usual, was ahead of his time.

The unified entity that animated most of Ben’s life was “that fine and noble china vase” otherwise known as the British Empire. Ben couldn’t imagine the vase without its largest and most vital piece, the American colonies. When the vase shattered, Ben couldn’t accept it. Like a jilted lover who refuses to believe the affair is over, he needed time to adjust to this painful truth.

In London, he continued to meet with friends and visit taverns. He even launched a new group, the Wednesday Club, which met at Craven Street. He corresponded with fellow scientists and began working on a simplified prayer book, a kind of universal liturgy.

He also played the role of colonial interpreter. He’d meet with anyone curious about America, especially potential emigrants. In September 1774, he met a failed corset maker with big ambitions. Franklin saw something in him and suggested he seek his fortune in America. He wrote a letter to his son-in-law, Richard Bache, recommending this “ingenious worthy young man,” now en route to Pennsylvania. The man had little education, but would make a good clerk or surveyor. He also could write. The young man’s name? Thomas Paine. When Paine later published, anonymously, his incendiary pamphlet Common Sense, many people thought it was Franklin’s work.

Ben, ever the possibilian, also engaged in some thirteenth-hour diplomacy. He drafted a list of seventeen “hints” for compromise and relayed them to British officials via Quaker friends. Perhaps, he thought, the affair was not over.

One day, a friend, Caroline Howe, invited Ben to a game of chess. When he arrived, he found Caroline’s brother, Admiral Richard Howe, waiting and eager to discuss a possible compromise between Britain and the colonies. Alas, the chessboard diplomacy fizzled, as did other last-minute attempts to head off war. The Old Conjurer was out of tricks.

To stay or to go? That is one of life’s thorniest questions, the subject of songs and poems and many therapy sessions. Choosing is difficult. We need a method. Ben devised his own. He called it “moral algebra.” Too often, he said, people make important decisions based not on the best reasons but the most recent one that pops into mind. He’d draw a vertical line on a piece of paper, listing pros in one column and cons in the other. He also assigned a relative weight to each pro and con. If a pro and a con negated each other, he’d cross them out. Then he’d set the paper aside. If after two or three days, he felt the same way, he knew he had his decision. “This kind of moral algebra I have often practiced in important & dubious concerns; and tho’ it cannot be mathematically exact, I have found it extremely useful.”

Only one example of Ben’s moral algebra has survived. Dated 1773, it depicts Ben wrestling with the question of whether to stay in London or return to Philadelphia. At first glance (and second glance too), it looks like gibberish, the scrawling of a madman:

Actually, the gibberish is decipherable. “S. J. P.—Eur” refers to an aborted trip to Europe with his friend Sir John Pringle. He still hoped to take that journey, thus a reason to stay in London. “Get clear of Agys” refers to the four colonies he now represented: Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia. By going home, he would rid himself of these exasperating assignments. At this time, in 1773, the math favored staying in London. So he did. Two years later, the math changed.

Might Ben’s trick, his moral algebra, work for the rest of us? Yes. And no. Listing the pros and cons of any decision is easy; the hard part is weighting them. I can think of many reasons why I should buy a Porsche 718 Boxster: thrills, a sense of mastery, faster commute times. But those reasons do not compensate for the one reason why I should not buy the Porsche: I like being married. Moral algebra is an inexact science but useful nonetheless.

How did Ben’s wife, Deborah, factor into his calculations? Not very much, it seems. He was fond of her but not fond enough to return home when she fell ill in 1769. She had suffered a stroke. Dr. Thomas Bond, Franklin’s friend and cofounder of the Pennsylvania Hospital, wrote to Ben that spring, reporting that Deborah had suffered a temporary loss of memory and other neurological damage. “These are bad symptoms in advanced life and auger danger of further injury on the nervous system,” he warned. Franklin consulted with a physician friend in London but did not return home. The task of caring for Deborah fell to their daughter, Sally. Deborah’s letters slowed, and by late 1773 stopped. “It is now a very long time indeed since I have the pleasure of a line from you,” he wrote the following spring. “I hope however that you are as well as I am, thanks to God.”

Deborah was not well. In December, she suffered a second stroke, this time fatal. William attended the funeral of “my poor old mother.” (She was actually his stepmother. William was born out of wedlock before Ben and Deborah married; the identity of his biological mother remains a mystery.) Then, on Christmas Eve, William wrote an uncharacteristically harsh letter to his father. “I heartily wish you had happened to have come over in the fall, as I think her disappointment in that respect preyed a good deal on her spirits.”

Did William just accuse his father, Benjamin Franklin, of indirectly killing his wife? It might be an exaggeration, but there is some truth to the charge. Ben’s letters to his wife had flagged in recent years. His sense of familial obligation tended to flow in only one direction. He wrote emphatically about a son’s “natural duties” to his father, but said nothing of a father’s reciprocal duties to his son or a husband’s obligations to his wife, especially one as loving and faithful as Deborah. Why couldn’t Ben get his ass on a boat to Philadelphia and be with his ailing wife?

“You have to accept that there are just some things we will never know,” Mitch Kramer, the Franklin interpreter, told me. He was speaking about another mystery in Ben’s life—the precise location of his famous kite experiment—but the answer applies equally to many such episodes. Despite the long paper trail he left behind, Ben remains elusive. This was no accident. He cultivated an air of inscrutability, perfected to an art form. Occasionally, though, events proved so momentous, the electrical charge so powerful, that private Ben spilled into public view.

Sometime in March 1775, Ben decided it was time to act. He was comfortable in London, but comfort is never enough. He was going home. Was it guilt over neglecting his ailing wife? Or was it the recognition that he had outlived his usefulness in London; the vase was shattered? Perhaps his motives were more immediate and personal. Rumors circulated that British authorities were preparing a warrant for his arrest.

March 19, 1775, was Franklin’s last full day in London. He was with his good friend, Joseph Priestley. They were reading the most recent newspapers, with Ben asking his friend to separate the American ones from the British. Ben read of the horrendous news from back home: the quartering of unwanted British troops in American homes, the trade embargo meant to suffocate the colonies, the fear of further reprisals. Ben had to pause reading frequently, Priestley recalled, because of “the tears literally running down his cheeks.” Franklin was an odd fish but not a cold one.

The next day, Franklin boarded the Pennsylvania Packet for Philadelphia. He had advanced his departure date by two weeks after receiving a tip that British authorities might take drastic action against him. While at sea, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

I decide to spend my last day in London at Number Seven Craven Street. The timing feels right. It is July Fourth.

I take the Tube to Embankment Station, then stop at a small park to eat the sushi takeaway I had picked up and to collect my thoughts. The English sun is making one of its periodic cameo appearances. I find a seat—a nice beach chair, no less—and soak up the rare ultraviolet rays. I spot a woman sitting on a nearby bench. Her hair is pelican white, her skin ruddy, and her clothes, from the black patent leather shoes to the paisley dress, decades out of fashion. She’s reading a tabloid—a paper newspaper that, with each turn of a page, emits a distinct crinkling sound. She is the only one reading a newspaper. Everyone else (myself included) is bent over in silent prayer to their smartphones. The woman removes an umbrella from her purse—a simple, black one like the kind street hawkers sell at inflated prices during rainstorms—and uses it to shield herself from the unlikely midday sun. No one notices her. She is invisible.

I find the tableau sad. But why? Is it her age, or my perception of her age? Some philosophers argue there is no difference. Age is perception and nothing more. Chronometric age tells us nothing about a person. It tells us nothing about Ben Franklin who, at nearly seventy, was just getting started.

I walk the short distance to Craven Street, past the Ship and Shovel, “London’s Only Pub in Two Halves,” and the gym called “The Gym” and the Boris Bikes, neatly lined up, before arriving at Number Seven. The staff has decorated the front door with a red-white-and-blue ribbon. On the first floor, I find Ben, in bust form, wearing a birthday hat held by a string tucked under his chin. The hat would look absurd on other founders, but Ben totally pulls it off. I can hear the small crowd of American tourists in the garden below eating nachos and drinking Yuengling. Once again, though, I have this room, Ben’s room, to myself.

After Franklin moved out and his landlady, Margaret Stevenson, died a few years later, the house underwent a variety of incarnations. For a long time, it was a hotel; then in the 1950s and 1960s, it served as the office for a mysterious nonprofit called the British Society for International Understanding. Rumors circulated that it was a front for the CIA. Then, for a while the house was abandoned and used as a flophouse by drug addicts and the homeless. Valuable marble was ripped from the fireplaces.

Finally, a group of Franklinistas, led by American Márcia Balisciano, came to the rescue. There were many twists and turns involving English Heritage and British Rail and even Margaret Thatcher before the house was saved and preserved as a small museum. “I think it has its own will to survive,” Márcia, now director of Benjamin Franklin House, told me. She is speaking metaphorically, of course. Or is she? Franklin’s homes in Boston, Philadelphia, and Paris are long gone, but this one still stands. Why? The dedication of people like Márcia Balisciano played a role, but so did luck. Distrust not providence. We know less than we think we do, and we control even less.

The Pennsylvania Packet enjoyed unusually good weather. It was a pleasant crossing. Franklin, as usual, used the time well, recording his thoughts on his failed mission to London. This time, he dropped any pretense of diplomatic language. British parliamentarians were not qualified to govern “a herd of swine,” let alone an entire people. He was speaking of Britain’s hereditary legislators, a custom he found absurd. It would make more sense and cause less mischief to have hereditary professors of mathematics. Britain’s elected House of Commons were just as corrupt, he said, accepting bribes for their votes.

At some point during the six-week journey, Ben put his quill down and turned to his one dependable diversion: science. He took ocean temperature readings several times a day, part of his ongoing studies of the Gulf Stream. He sketched his ideas about how to design faster, more efficient ships. The weather continued to cooperate and was “constantly so moderate that a London wherry [a light rowboat] might have accompanied us all the way,” he said.

On May 5, the Pennsylvania Packet docked at the foot of Philadelphia’s Market Street. Only then did Franklin learn that while he was at sea, shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord. His worst fears were realized. War had come to America.