Part 11

“The 28th of March, Anno Dom. 1708,” it begins, “being the night this sham prophet had so impudently fixed for my last, which made little impression on myself: but I cannot answer for my whole family; for my wife, with concern more than usual, prevailed on me to take somewhat to sweat for a cold; and between the hours of eight and nine to go to bed; the maid, as she was warming my bed, with a curiosity natural to young wenches, runs to the window, and asks of one passing the street who the bell tolled for? Dr. Partridge, says he, the famous almanack-maker, who died suddenly this evening: the poor girl, provoked, told him he lied like a rascal; the other very sedately replied, the sexton had so informed him, and if false, he was to blame for imposing upon a stranger. She asked a second, and a third, as they passed, and every one was in the same tone. Now, I do not say these are accomplices to a certain astrological ’squire, and that one Bickerstaff might be sauntering thereabout, because I will assert nothing here, but what I dare attest for plain matter of fact. My wife at this fell into a violent disorder, and I must own I was a little discomposed at the oddness of the accident. In the mean time one knocks at my door; Betty runs down, and opening, finds a sober grave person, who modestly inquires if this was Dr. Partridge’s? She, taking him for some cautious city patient, that came at that time for privacy, shews him into the dining-room. As soon as I could compose myself, I went to him, and was surprised to find my gentleman mounted on a table with a two-foot rule in his hand, measuring my walls, and taking the dimensions of the room. Pray, sir, says I, not to interrupt you, have you any business with me?--Only, sir, replies he, order the girl to bring me a better light, for this is a very dim one.--Sir, says I, my name is Partridge.--O! the doctor’s brother, belike, cries he; the staircase, I believe, and these two apartments hung in close mourning will be sufficient, and only a strip of bays round the other rooms. The doctor must needs die rich, he had great dealings in his way for many years; if he had no family coat, you had as good use the escutcheons of the company, they are as showish, and will look as magnificent, as if he was descended from the blood royal.--With that I assumed a greater air of authority, and demanded who employed him, or how he came there?--Why, I was sent, sir, by the company of undertakers, says he, and they were employed by the honest gentleman, who is executor to the good doctor departed; and our rascally porter, I believe, is fallen fast asleep with the black cloth and sconces, or he had been here, and we might have been tacking up by this time.--Sir, says I, pray be advised by a friend, and make the best of your speed out of my doors, for I hear my wife’s voice (which, by the by, is pretty distinguishable), and in that corner of the room stands a good cudgel, which somebody has felt before now; if that light in her hands, and she know the business you come about, without consulting the stars, I can assure you it will be employed very much to the detriment of your person.--Sir, cries he, bowing with great civility, I perceive extreme grief for the loss of the doctor disorders you a little at present, but early in the morning I will wait on you with all the necessary materials....

“Well, once more I got my door closed, and prepared for bed, in hopes of a little repose after so many ruffling adventures; just as I was putting out my light in order to it, another bounces as hard as he can knock; I open the window and ask who is there and what he wants? I am Ned, the sexton, replies he, and come to know whether the doctor left any orders for a funeral sermon, and where he is to be laid, and whether his grave is to be plain or bricked?--Why, sirrah, say I, you know me well enough; you know I am not dead, and how dare you affront me after this manner?--Alackaday, sir, replies the fellow, why it is in print, and the whole town knows you are dead; why, there is Mr. White, the joiner, is fitting screws to your coffin; he will be here with it in an instant: he was afraid you would have wanted it before this time.... In short, what with undertakers, embalmers, joiners, sextons, and your damned elegy hawkers upon a late practitioner in physic and astrology, I got not one wink of sleep the whole night, nor scarce a moment’s rest ever since....

“I could not stir out of doors for the space of three months after this, but presently one comes up to me in the street, Mr. Partridge, that coffin you was last buried in, I have not yet been paid for: Doctor, cries another dog, how do you think people can live by making of graves for nothing? next time you die, you may even toll out the bell yourself for Ned. A third rogue tips me by the elbow, and wonders how I have the conscience to sneak abroad without paying my funeral expenses.--Lord, says one, I durst have swore that was honest Dr. Partridge, my old friend, but, poor man, he is gone.--I beg your pardon, says another, you look so like my old acquaintance that I used to consult on some private occasions; but, alack, he is gone the way of all flesh.--Look, look, look, cries a third, after a competent space of staring at me, would not one think our neighbour, the almanack-maker, was crept out of his grave, to take the other peep at the stars in this world, and shew how much he is improved in fortune-telling by having taken a journey to the other?...

“My poor wife is run almost distracted with being called widow Partridge, when she knows it is false; and once a term she is cited into the court to take out letters of administration. But the greatest grievance is a paltry quack that takes up my calling just under my nose, and in his printed directions, with N. B.--says he lives in the house of the late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner in leather, physic, and astrology....”

The astrologer, forgetting to refer to the stars for evidence, indignantly declared himself to be alive, and Swift’s returning “Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., against what is objected to by Mr. Partridge in his Almanack for the present year, 1709, by the said Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.,” complains:

“Mr. Partridge has been lately pleased to treat me after a very rough manner in that which is called his almanack for the present year ... [regarding] my predictions, which foretold the death of Mr. Partridge to happen on March 29, 1708. This he is pleased to contradict absolutely in the almanack he has published for the present year....

“Without entering into criticisms of chronology about the hour of his death, I shall only prove that Mr. Partridge is not alive. And my first argument is this: about a thousand gentlemen having bought his almanacks for this year, merely to find what he said against me, at every line they read, they would lift up their eyes, and cry out betwixt rage and laughter, ‘they were sure no man alive ever writ such damned stuff as this.’ Neither did I ever hear that opinion disputed: ... Therefore, if an uninformed carcase walks still about and is pleased to call himself Partridge, Mr. Bickerstaff does not think himself any way answerable for that. Neither had the said carcase any right to beat the poor boy who happened to pass by it in the street, crying, ‘A full and true account of Dr. Partridge’s death,’ etc.

“... I will plainly prove him to be dead, out of his own almanack for this year, and from the very passage which he produces to make us think him alive. He there says ‘he is not only now alive, but was also alive upon that very 29th of March which I foretold he should die on’: by this he declares his opinion that a man may be alive now who was not alive a twelvemonth ago. And indeed there lies the sophistry of his argument. He dares not assert he was alive ever since that 29th of March, but that he ‘is now alive and was so on that day’: I grant the latter; for he did not die till night, as appears by the printed account of his death, in a letter to a lord; and whether he be since revived, I leave the world to judge....”

The joke had gained its end; the astrologer and philomath had been ridiculed out of existence. But the name of the “astrological ’squire” was in everybody’s mouth; and when in April, 1709, Steele began “The Tatler,” Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, spoke in the dedication of a gentleman who “had written Predictions, and Two or Three other Pieces in my Name, which had render’d it famous through all Parts of Europe; and by an inimitable Spirit and Humour, raised it to as high a Pitch of Reputation as it could possibly arrive at.”

The Inquisition in Portugal had, with utmost gravity, condemned Bickerstaff’s predictions and the readers of them, and had burnt his predictions. The Company of Stationers in London obtained in 1709 an injunction against the issuing of any almanac by John Partridge, as if in fact he were dead.

* * * * *

If the fame of this foolery was through all parts of Europe, it must also have crossed to the English colonies of America, and by reference to this fact we may explain the curious literary parallel Poor Richard’s Almanac affords. Twenty-five years later Benjamin Franklin played the selfsame joke in Philadelphia.

Franklin was but two years old when Swift and his Bickerstaff coadjutors were jesting. But by the time he had grown and wandered to Philadelphia and become a journeyman printer--by 1733--Addison, Steele, Prior, and Congreve had died, and Swift’s wonderful mind was turned upon and eating itself in the silent deanery of St. Patrick’s.

Conditions about him gave Franklin every opportunity for the jest. The almanac in the America of 1733 had even greater acceptance than the like publication of England in Isaac Bickerstaff’s day. No output of the colonial press, not even the publication of theological tracts, was so frequent or so remunerative. It was the sole annual which commonly penetrated the farmhouse of the colonists, where it hung in neighborly importance near the Bible, Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” and Jonathan Edwards’s tractate on “The Freedom of the Human Will.” And it had uses. Besides furnishing a calendar, weather prophecies, and jokes, it added receipts for cooking, pickling, dyeing, and in many ways was the “Useful Companion” its title-page proclaimed.

So keen, practical, and energetic a nature as Franklin’s could not let the opportunity pass for turning a penny, and with the inimitable adaptability that marked him all his life he begins his Poor Richard of 1733:

“Courteous Reader, I might in this place attempt to gain thy favour by declaring that I write Almanacks with no other view than that of the publick good, but in this I should not be sincere; and men are now-a-days too wise to be deceiv’d by pretences, how specious soever. The plain truth of the matter is, I am excessive poor, and my wife, good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she can not bear, she says, to sit spinning in her shift of tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my books and rattling-traps (as she calls my instruments), if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has offer’d me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus began to comply with my dame’s desire.

“Indeed, this motive would have had force enough to have made me publish an Almanack many years since, had it not been overpowered by my regard for my good friend and fellow-student, Mr. Titan Leeds, whose interest I was extreamly unwilling to hurt. But this obstacle (I am far from speaking it with pleasure) is soon to be removed, since inexorable death, who was never known to respect merit, has already prepared the mortal dart, the fatal sister has already extended her destroying shears, and that ingenious man must soon be taken from us. He dies, by my calculation, made at his request, on Oct. 17, 1733, 3 ho. 29 m., P.M., at the very instant of the ☌ of ☉ and ☿. By his own calculation he will survive till the 26th of the same month. This small difference between us we have disputed whenever we have met these nine years past; but at length he is inclinable to agree with my judgment. Which of us is most exact, a little time will now determine. As, therefore, these Provinces may not longer expect to see any of his performances after this year, I think myself free to take up my task, and request a share of publick encouragement, which I am the more apt to hope for on this account, that the buyer of my Almanack may consider himself not only as purchasing an useful utensil, but as performing an act of charity to his poor

“Friend and servant, “R. SAUNDERS.”

Franklin had a more eager biter than Partridge proved to Bickerstaff’s bait, and Titan Leeds, in his American Almanack for 1734, showed how uneasy was the hook:

“Kind Reader, Perhaps it may be expected that I should say something concerning an Almanack printed for the Year 1733, said to be writ by Poor Richard or Richard Saunders, who for want of other matter was pleased to tell his Readers, that he had calculated my Nativity, and from thence predicts my Death to be the 17th of October, 1733. At 29 min. past 3 a-clock in the Afternoon, and that these Provinces may not expect to see any more of his (Titan Leeds) Performances, and this precise Predicter, who predicts to a Minute, proposes to succeed me in Writing of Almanacks; but notwithstanding his false Prediction, I have by the Mercy of God lived to write a diary for the Year 1734, and to publish the Folly and Ignorance of this presumptuous Author. Nay, he adds another gross Falsehood in his Almanack, viz.--That by my own Calculation, I shall survive until the 26th of the said Month (October), which is as untrue as the former, for I do not pretend to that Knowledge, altho’ he has usurpt the Knowledge of the Almighty herein, and manifested himself a Fool and a Lyar. And by the mercy of God I have lived to survive this conceited Scriblers Day and Minute whereon he has predicted my Death; and as I have supplyed my Country with Almanacks for three seven Years by past, to general Satisfaction, so perhaps I may live to write when his Performances are Dead. Thus much from your annual Friend, Titan Leeds, October 18, 1733, 3 ho. 33 min. P.M.”

“... In the preface to my last Almanack,” wrote Franklin, in genuine humor, in Poor Richard for 1734, “I foretold the death of my dear old friend and fellow-student, the learned and ingenious Mr. Titan Leeds, which was to be the 17th of October, 1733, 3 h., 29 m., P.M., at the very instant of the ☌ of ☉ and ☿. By his own calculation, he was to survive till the 26th of the same month, and expire in the time of the eclipse, near 11 o’clock A.M. At which of these times he died, or whether he be really yet dead, I cannot at this present writing positively assure my readers; forasmuch as a disorder in my own family demanded my presence, and would not permit me, as I had intended, to be with him in his last moments, to receive his last embrace, to close his eyes, and do the duty of a friend in performing the last offices to the departed. Therefore it is that I cannot positively affirm whether he be dead or not; for the stars only show to the skilful what will happen in the natural and universal chain of causes and effects; but ’tis well known, that the events which would otherwise certainly happen, at certain times, in the course of nature, are sometimes set aside or postpon’d, for wise and good reasons, by the immediate particular disposition of Providence; which particular disposition the stars can by no means discover or foreshow. There is, however (and I can not speak it without sorrow), there is the strongest probability that my dear friend is no more; for there appears in his name, as I am assured, an Almanack for the year 1734, in which I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome manner, in which I am called a false predicter, an ignorant, a conceited scribbler, a fool and a lyar. Mr. Leeds was too well bred to use any man so indecently and so scurrilously, and moreover his esteem and affection for me was extraordinary; so that it is to be feared that pamphlet may be only a contrivance of somebody or other, who hopes, perhaps, to sell two or three years’ Almanacks still, by the sole force and virtue of Mr. Leeds’ name. But, certainly, to put words into the mouth of a gentleman and a man of letters against his friend, which the meanest and most scandalous of the people might be ashamed to utter even in a drunken quarrel, is an unpardonable injury to his memory, and an imposition upon the publick.

“Mr. Leeds was not only profoundly skilful in the useful science he profess’d, but he was a man of exemplary sobriety, a most sincere friend, and an exact performer of his word. These valuable qualifications, with many others, so much endeared him to me, that although it should be so, that, contrary to all probability, contrary to my prediction and his own, he might possibly be yet alive, yet my loss of honour, as a prognosticate, cannot afford me so much mortification as his life, health, and safety would give me joy and satisfaction....”

Again, Leeds, in The American Almanack for 1735, returns Franklin’s jest:

“Courteous and Kind Reader: My Almanack being in its usual Method, needs no Explanation; but perhaps it may be expected by some that I shall say something concerning Poor Richard, or otherwise Richard Saunders’s Almanack, which I suppose was printed in the Year 1733 for the ensuing Year 1734, wherein he useth me with such good Manners, I can hardly find what to say to him, without it is to advise him not to be too proud because by his Prædicting my Death, and his writing an Almanack....

“But if Falsehood and Inginuity be so rewarded, What may he expect if ever he be in a capacity to publish that that is either Just or according to Art? Therefore I shall say little more about it than, as a Friend, to advise he will never take upon him to prædict or ascribe any Person’s Death, till he has learned to do it better than he did before....”

To this exhortation Franklin makes the following gay sally in Poor Richard for 1735.

“... Whatever may be the musick of the spheres, how great soever the harmony of the stars, ’tis certain there is no harmony among the star-gazers: but they are perpetually growling and snarling at one another like strange curs, or like some men at their wives. I had resolved to keep the peace on my own part, and offend none of them; and I shall persist in that resolution. But having receiv’d much abuse from Titan Leeds deceas’d (Titan Leeds when living would not have used me so): I say, having receiv’d much abuse from the ghost of Titan Leeds, who pretends to be still living, and to write Almanacks in spight of me and my predictions, I can not help saying, that tho’ I take it patiently, I take it very unkindly. And whatever he may pretend, ’tis undoubtedly true that he is really defunct and dead. First, because the stars are seldom disappointed, never but in the case of wise men, sapiens dominabitur asties, and they foreshadowed his death at the time I predicted it. Secondly, ’twas requisite and necessary he should die punctually at that time for the honor of astrology, the art professed both by him and his father before him. Thirdly, ’tis plain to every one that reads his two last Almanacks (for 1734 and ’35), that they are not written with that life his performances used to be written with; the wit is low and flat; the little hints dull and spiritless; nothing smart in them but Hudibras’s verses against astrology at the heads of the months in the last, which no astrologer but a dead one would have inserted, and no man living would or could write such stuff as the rest. But lastly, I shall convince him from his own words that he is dead (ex ore suo condemnatus est); for in his preface to his Almanack for 1734, he says: ‘Saunders adds another gross falsehood in his Almanack, viz., that by my own calculation, I shall survive until the 26th of the said month, October, 1733, which is as untrue as the former.’ Now if it be as Leeds says, untrue and a gross falsehood, that he survived till the 26th of October, 1733, then it is certainly true that he died before that time; and if he died before that time he is dead now to all intents and purposes, anything he may say to the contrary notwithstanding. And at what time before the 26th is it so likely he should die, as at the time by me predicted, viz., the 17th of October aforesaid? But if some people will walk and be troublesome after death, it may perhaps be borne with a little, because it cannot well be avoided, unless one would be at the pains and expense of laying them in the Red Sea; however, they should not presume too much upon the liberty allowed them. I know confinement must needs be mighty irksome to the free spirit of an astronomer, and I am too compassionate to proceed suddenly to extremities with it; nevertheless, tho’ I resolve with reluctance, I shall not long defer, if it does not speedily learn to treat its living friends with better manners.

“I am,

“Courteous reader,

“Your obliged friend and servant,

“R. SAUNDERS.”

Here for the nonce the jeu d’esprit ended. In carrying the matter further Franklin hardly showed the taste of Bickerstaff. The active, bristling, self-assertive ὕβρις which characterized his early manhood led him further on to stand over the very grave of Leeds. Before he made his Almanac for 1740 his competitor had died. But even Leeds dead he seemed to deem fair play.

“October 7, 1739.

“COURTEOUS READER: You may remember that in my first Almanack, published for the year 1733, I predicted the death of my dear friend, Titan Leeds, Philomat, to happen that year on the 17th day of October, 3 h. 29 m. P.M. The good man, it seems, died accordingly. But W. B. and A. B.[6] have continued to publish Almanacks in his name ever since; asserting for some years that he was still living. At length when the truth could no longer be concealed from the world, they confessed his death in their Almanack for 1739, but pretended that he died not till last year, and that before his departure he had furnished them with calculations for 7 years to come.--Ah, my friends, these are poor shifts and thin disguises; of which indeed I should have taken little or no notice, if you had not at the same time accused me as a false predictor; an aspersion that the more affects me as my whole livelyhood depends on a contrary character.

“But to put this matter beyond dispute, I shall acquaint the world with a fact, as strange and surprising as it is true; being as follows, viz.:

“On the 4th instant, toward midnight, as I sat in my little study writing this Preface, I fell fast asleep; and continued in that condition for some time, without dreaming any thing, to my knowledge. On awaking I found lying before me the following, viz.:

“‘DEAR FRIEND SAUNDERS: My respect for you continues even in this separate state; and I am griev’d to see the aspersions thrown on you by the malevolence of avaricious publishers of Almanacks, who envy your success. They say your prediction of my death in 1733 was false, and they pretend that I remained alive many years after. But I do hereby certify that I did actually die at that time, precisely at the hour you mention’d, with a variation only of 5 min. 53 sec, which must be allow’d to be no great matter in such cases. And I do further declare that I furnish’d them with no calculations of the planets’ motions, etc., seven years after my death, as they are pleased to give out: so that the stuff they publish as an Almanack in my name is no more mine than ’tis yours.