The HBO miniseries, based on David McCulluogh's 2001 biography, stars Paul Giamatti, as John Adams, and Laura Linney as his wife, Abigail. Amanda and I have now watched the first four (of seven) episodes and that means we have absorbed somewhere around 300 minutes of unrelieved solemnity. No doubt lightheartedness will not accomplish a revolution but you might have thought that Abigail at least would take a day off from the heavy lifting. In episode three Adams, in Paris to solicit French assistance, is appalled when, barging into Benjamin Franklin's quarters on some elevated matter, he discovers that electricity experiments are not the old man's lone avocation. A little more of that, please.
The incident reminded me of the letter in which Franklin, in the course of advising a young friend to marry, sees fit also to lay out a Plan B involving older amours, who are to be preferred to their younger, fresher counterparts. He enumerates the reasons; for example:
5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part. The Face first grows lank and Wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower parts continuing to the last as plump as ever; so that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old one from a young one. And as in the Dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of Corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal and frequently superior; every Knack being by Practice capable by improvement.
The eighth, and last, is: "They are so grateful!" Abigail would not approve.
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