The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon S. Wood Page B

growing rapidly, this young printer well knew that entering into the status of a gentleman was not a simple matter, and he was not at all sure that he even wanted to try.
    There were many people, he wrote in an anonymous newspaper piece in 1733, who, “by their Industry or good Fortune, from mean Beginnings find themselves in Circumstances a little more easy.” Many of these people were immediately seized by “an Ambition... to become Gentlefolks." But it was “no easy Thing for a Clown or a Labourer, on a sudden to hit in all respects, the natural and easy Manner of those who have been genteely educated: And ’tis the Curse of Imitation, that it almost always either under-does or over-does.”
    Franklin’s newspaper persona—“an ordinary Mechanick” who prays that “I may always have the Grace to know my self and my Station”— went on to describe the problems faced by the newly wealthy artisan trying to pass as a gentleman. “The true Gentleman, who is well known to be such, can take a Walk, or drink a Glass, and converse freely, if there be occasion, with honest Men of any Degree below him, without degrading or fearing to degrade himself in the least.” In other words, a true gentleman, confident of his status, could condescend with ease. The parvenu was not able to act in this easy manner. Whenever Franklin’s persona witnessed such a person acting “mighty cautious” in company with those who appear to be his inferiors, he knew that that person was “some new Gentleman, or rather half Gentleman, or Mungrel, an unnatural Compound of Earth and Brass like the Feet of Nebuchadnezzar’s Image.”
    The same was true of women who did not know how to act with their supposed inferiors. If Franklin’s artisan persona found “some young Woman Mistress of a new fine furnished House, treating me with a kind of Superiority, a distant sort of Freedom, and high Manner of Condescension that might become a Governor’s Lady, I cannot help imagining her to be some poor Girl that is but lately married.” Or if she acted in a “very haughty and imperious” manner, “I conclude that ’tis not long since she was somebody’s Servant Maid.”
    These kinds of upstarts had the respect of neither the gentry nor the commoners. “They are the Ridicule and Contempt of both sides.” A “lumpish stupid” artisan who “kept to his natural Sphere” may not have been envied by his fellow artisans, but “none of us despis’d him.” Yet when he got “a little Money, the Case is exceedingly alter’d.”
    Without Experience of Men or Knowledge of Books, or even common Wit, the vain Fool thrusts himself into Conversation with People of the best Sense and the most polite. All his Absurdities, which were scarcely taken Notice of among us, stand evident among them, and afford them continual Matter of Diversion. At the same time, we below cannot help considering him as a Monkey that climbs a Tree, the higher he goes, the more he shows his Arse.
    There were many kinds of “Molattoes" in the world, Franklin concluded—in race, in religion, in politics, in love. “But of all sorts of Molattoes, none appear to me so monstrously ridiculous as the Molatto Gentleman .” 91
    Since Franklin did not want to appear ridiculous, he was not about to act the gentleman unless he was fully prepared to assume the rank and the rank was fully prepared to accept him. Like Daniel Defoe, who was wrestling with some of the same problems of tradesmen trying to become gentlemen, Franklin knew only too well the nature of the society he lived in. Since Defoe had written that a gentleman was someone “whose Ancestors have at least for some time been rais’d above the Class of Mechanicks,” Franklin knew it would not be easy for him to hoist himself up in one generation. 92
    Besides, he had the example of the failure of David Harry, who had taken over Samuel Keimer’s print shop, to make him cautious. Earlier Franklin had actually proposed a