There's always something to write about

I'm still working on the book about Ben Franklin. One of my favorite quotes was his description of a political foe as having an "accommodating conscious"--that is so classic. Then John Adams said of BF, that in France he has a monopoly of reputation and an indecency in displaying it. He drove puritanical John Adams crazy. BF was quite the ladies man, although Isaacson seems to feel it was just flirtations. From the sound of it, Bill Clinton had nothing on him. And his illegitimate son, William was the govenor of New Jersey who broke with BF to side with England in the Revolutionary War. How unlucky is New Jersey even after all these years. So William has an illegitimate son and I just got to the part where Temple (William's son) is off to have illegitimate children--one with his Father's wife's younger sister--whom he then abandons. So the child, Ellen is raised by her Grandparents, who are also her aunt and uncle. You can just hear old Ben chuckle Se La Vive.
Isaacson also has the benefit of having the notes from the spies in France who wrote about everything BF did. Isaacson believes that BF knew there were spies, but that he didn't know who they were, so he only said what he wanted everyone to hear. Isaacson says that the notes from the spies certianly made things easier for England, but it doesn't appear that the information was timely enough to cause any casualties. In fact, BF's able to play England and France off of each other by privately discussing being very open to offers of both, all the while having no intention of making consessions, making both sides think the other was winning in negotiations with America. He saw the treaty with France as pretty much a gift with no consessions by America (although Adams was more pragmatic and thought we were giving France this great stratigic position against England. As if.)
I skipped to the back and read the distribution of his estate. He gave money to the various cities to make loans to business people with specific instructions on how the money was going to grow over time to be a hugh endowment. It came close to his calculations in Boston, but Philidelphia was far short of his calculation. Some critics in Philidelphia claimed that Boston only lent money to rich people while Philidelphia lent money as intended to businesses that needed it (and therefore were not always able to pay it back).
The picture on the front of the book has a slight grin that makes it easy to imagine a twinkle in his eye and great amusement at posterity.