By Jane Durrell
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
An Erickson Tribune reader, Bob Sprinkle, put me onto London’s Benjamin Franklin House, after reading my Tribune story “Off-beat London” in the April 2006 edition.
I had frequently been in the Franklin House vicinity— it’s at 36 Craven Street, shouting distance from Trafalgar Square—but had no idea it was there. This is not the usual historical house experience.
In fact, a visit to Franklin House is called a “Historical Experience,” with capital letters, for good reason. No one would enjoy this experience more than that inventive fellow, Franklin himself, who once said, “The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon.”
‘An extraordinary sensation’
The “rapid progress of true science” these days allows for the combination of live interpretation, leading-edge sound, lighting, and visual projection that gives visitors to Franklin House an extraordinary sensation of glimpsing and hearing happenings now long past.
My notes run like this: “A pretty actress, wearing a conservative 18th century dress and wig, takes us through the lightly furnished, paneled rooms, speaking more or less to our little group but also in reply to recorded voices that purport to be Franklin himself, the landlady, and others. Films are projected onto the pale green of the paneled walls.
“Our guide herself says she is the landlady’s daughter, Polly Stevenson Hewson, whom Franklin called his ‘second daughter’ in the years he lived at Craven Street, missing his own family across the Atlantic. Polly was married to William Hewson, described as an ‘eminent anatomist,’ just the sort to take part in Franklin’s incessant experiments and discussions. In the sitting room of landlady Margaret Stevenson we hear a tea party going on, voices of Mrs. Stevenson, of a musician friend, a printer friend, and Franklin himself.”