Word: franklins
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Franklin paid the price for his French posture, which he made appear comfortable when it was at times excruciating. By the end of the mission he had reason to complain of Congress, and it of him. After eight years in France, he seemed more the courtier than the father of self-reliance. His flaws had been on full display in Paris, where his detractors--burning with impatience while the wheels of European diplomacy ground at their stately pace--had had plenty of time to dilate upon them. In an uncharacteristically self-indulgent mood, he grumbled that Congress had shown little...
...there were two Franklins: the stately philosopher revered by the French and the eccentric, shambling, adage-spouting guy with the kite, about whom America has had mixed feelings. In France the ugly American wears as many faces as he does baseball caps, but the model American wears the placid, loose-jawed countenance of Ben Franklin, Ur-republican. He stands in stark contrast to his sanctimonious and chauvinistic and mercantile countrymen, a model of what the French like most in their Americans: a skeptical, subtle faux naif with a sense of humor and a taste for culture and a deep appreciation...
STACY SCHIFF, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her biography Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), is writing a book about Franklin's years in Paris
More than two centuries after his death, people are still trying to figure out how a paunchy, balding, bifocaled septuagenarian managed to get French ladies in a flutter. From his days as an ambitious young printer in Philadelphia to his years as a diplomatic superstar in France, Ben Franklin surrounded himself with adoring women, often much younger, usually attractive and preferably intelligent. For the most part, his loyal wife Deborah tolerated these dalliances. As she probably knew, most were never consummated. In fact, Franklin was a master of what the French call amitie amoureuse, whose English translation, amorous friendship, gives...
...DEBORAH FRANKLIN: THE AFFECTIONATE WIFE Deborah and Ben had a close marriage, except for the fact that for 18 of the 44 years of their union they lived apart. But even if their bond lacked grand passion, it had mutual respect. Plain and plump, Deborah, a carpenter's daughter, is first taken with the young printer when he begins lodging with her family shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia in 1723. They, as Benjamin put it, "interchang'd some promises"--an 18th century locution for engagement--a year later as he set off for England to buy printing equipment...