Canny Ben felt that emphasizing his humble origins would trick his French counterparts into underestimating him. When Ben was serving as America's diplomat to France, he liked to present his aristocratic hosts with cakes of that homemade soap that Jane sent to him from her tiny house in Boston. The crumbly green and white soap Jane would have used for that "grate wash" was from an old Franklin family recipe. "I am in the middle of a grate wash," she once wrote in a letter. What Lepore means by that line of near-poetry is that Jane Franklin's life, beginning at age 17 when she gave birth to the first of her 12 children, was one of nursing, lugging pails of night soil, butchering chickens, cooking and scrubbing. "Her days were days of flesh." That's just one of a multitude of striking observations that Jill Lepore makes about Jane Franklin, the baby sister of Ben. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Book of Ages Subtitle The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin Author Jill Lepore
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