gratitude and to have an opportunity to realize their own ambition
for themselves. We must not be driven into any foolish or
impossible course by the pressure of a desire to win their votes.
On the contrary, the pressure should come from us who had not the
opportunity to risk our lives, that those who did take such risk
shall be highly honored. For those who will identify themselves
with the tilling of the soil, there should be farms, small yet
complete, for which they can gradually pay on long time. For
others there should be such education for professional or
industrial life as they desire. For others, a home, not a
speculation in real estate, but a piece of that American soil for
which they fought. For these things we can pay without extra
financial strain, if we dedicate to this purpose merely the
interest upon the monies which other nations owe us. The extent of
our willingness to help these men is not to be measured by their
request but rather by our ability and their lasting welfare. ...
We are to extend our activities into all parts of the world. Our
trade is to grow as never before. Our people are to resume their
old place as traders on the seven seas. We are to know other
peoples better and make them all more and more our friends,
working with them as mutually dependent factors in the growth of
the world's life. For this day a definite foreign policy must be
made, one that is fair; to which none can take exception. Our
people shall go abroad for their good and the good of other lands,
with their skilled hands and their resourceful minds, and their
energetic capital, and they must be assured of support abroad, as
at home, in every honest venture.
TRUE AMERICANISM
AMERICA's ambition is to lead the world in showing what Democracy
can effect. This would be my conception of the large idea of the
campaign. It involves much more than the League of Nations. This
is our hour of test. We must not be little in our conception of
ourselves, nor yet have a conceit that is self-destructive.
America must prove herself a living thing, with policies that are
adequate to new conditions. ... We wish an international
settlement that will enable us to be more supremely great as
nationalists. This is the significance of the League of Nations.
It is a plan of hope. It is the only plan which the mind of man
has evolved which any number of nations has ever been willing to
accept as a buffer against devil-made war. ... It is a monumental
experiment which this century and other centuries will talk of and
think of and write of because it involves the lives of men and
women under it, and there is the possibility of giving our full
thought and energy and wealth to making life more enjoyable and
finer instead of more horrible and cruel. While other nations are
in the mood, we should agree with them, that we may spend our
lives and money in a rivalry of progress rather than in a
competition in the art of scientific boy-murder. There are times
when war is the ultimate and necessary appeal, but those times
should be made fewer by American genius and sacrifice.
And our prestige and power should not be wasted at this critical
time, because out of some fecund mind may come an abstract and
legalistic plan for some other kind of League. Let us be
practical. Let us go to the fullest limit with other nations who
are now willing to join hands with us, yet never yielding the
Constitutional Congressional control over our war making. ... Let
us take thought to-day of our opportunities else these may not
exist tomorrow. ... Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO TIMOTHY SPELLACY
August 2, 1920
MY DEAR TIM,--Here you are, when you are sick yourself, worrying
about me. Now, don't give any concern to any matter excepting
getting thoroughly well, just as soon as possible. You are doing
too much. You are not resting enough, and you are worrying. You
have got enough to take care of yourself and your family for the
rest of your lives, you have the respect of every one who knows
you, and the affection of every one who knows you well; in fact,
you have nothing to work for, and every reason to be contented. So
I suggest that you learn, in your later years, how to bum. I have
no doubt that Mike will come across something very good in
Colombia, if he doesn't get the fever, or break his blooming neck.
I have never seen so aggressive a group of old men as you fellows
are. You will not admit that you are more than twenty-one. ...
With my warmest regards, as always cordially yours, FRANKLIN K.
LANK
With the presentation of an Irish flag, August 10, 1920.
To Edward L. Doheny, with the cordial esteem of Franklin K. Lane.
This flag is a symbol. It stands for the finest thing in a human
being--aspiration--the seed of the Divine. It represents the
noblest hope of a thwarted and untiring people. It makes a call to
the heart of every generous-minded man, and gives vivifying
impulse to the home-loving of all faces. It is a symbol of a
people to whom most of the arts were known when England and
America were forest wastes, whose women have made the world
beautiful by their virtue, and whose men have made the world free
by their courage.
To Franklin D. Roosevelt New York, August, [1920]
DEAR OLD MAN,--This is hard work--to say that I can't be with you
on this great day in your life. [Footnote: Notification ceremonies
following Franklin D. Roosevelt's nomination as Vice-president by
the Democratic party.] You know that only the mandate of the
medical autocrats would keep me away, not that I could do you any
good by being there, but that you might know that many men like
myself take pride in you, rejoice in your opportunity, and keep
our faith in Democracy because out of it can come men of ideals
like yourself. I know/that you will not allow yourself to become
cheap, undignified, or demagogical. Remember, that East and West
alike, we want gentlemen to represent us, and we ask no man to be
a panderer or a hypocrite to get our votes. Frankness, and
largeness, and simplicity, and a fine fervor for the right, are
virtues that some must preserve, and where can we look for them if
not from the Roosevelts and the Delanos?
It is a great day for you and for all of us. Be wise! Don't be
brilliant. Get plenty of sleep. Do not give yourself to the
handshakers. For now your word carries far, and it must be a word
worthy of all you stand for. I honestly, earnestly ask God's
blessing on you. As always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
Our love to your dear Mother,--proud happy Mother,--and to
Eleanor.
To Mrs. George Ehle
Katonah, September, 1920
TO THE EHLE,--Now this is a pleasure to have a minute's talk with
you in the cool under an apple tree. You are gay, with Grouitches,
and other festive creatures, while I am glum, gloomy and
lugubrious. You know this is a novel experience for me to be in
care of two nurses and a doctor, not to speak of a wife; but I am
obedient, docile, humble, tractable, and otherwise dehumanized.
The plan here is to follow my boy's statement of the modern
prescription for women, "Catch 'em young; treat 'em rough; tell
'em nothing." Well, they don't catch me young, but otherwise the
prescription is filled. They reduced me to weakness, dependence,
and a sort of sour-mash, and now they say that on this foundation
they will build me up. Tho' I am still to lose some weight, being
only twenty-four pounds under my average for twenty years. I will
emerge from this spot, if I emerge at all, a regular Apollo, and
will do Russian dances for you on that lovely lawn under the
mulberry tree. And what happy memories of that spot I do have, and
they cluster about you, with your soft hand and your understanding
eye and your sympathetic mouth. You don't mind my making love to
you in this distant fashion do you? Well, this is a charming jail,
but jail it is after all, for I can't flee, though all the leisure
in the world were mine--and it irks an American eagle or eaglet.
Dear Anne has been improving here. She now is jolly, tho' it has
been hot. Responsibility kills her, and I thrive on it.
I believe I will take that place we went to see on the Shepaug.
Ryan, my friend, is to manage it. Well, we have a place of refuge,
eh? where the wicked and the boring and the ununderstanding cannot
pursue.
But oh! my dreams do not come true these days, the magic touch is
lost, the Fairies have been hurt in their feelings, my Daemon has
deserted, and instead of beauty and joy and power, sweet content
and warm friendship, I am struggling merely to live--and to what
end?
Please go into my room some morning early and look out to the
gate, the cobwebs must be diamond-sprinkled on the circle at the
doorway, the catalpa trees must stand like stiff, prim, proper,
knickerbockered footmen, on either side of the hedge, the ground
must rise in a very gradual swell and culminate in the rose-
covered gate. Throw it a kiss for me--(I wonder if there could be
any roses left?). All of it is a lovely bit of man's handiwork,
and Mr. Eno should have been born poor so that his planning mind,
conceiving things of beauty in regular and balanced form, could
have been used by many.
Tell him I got his nice letter and will drop him a line one day.
With much love,
FRANK LANE
TO ISADORE B. DOCKWEILER
Washington, September 25, 1920
MY DEAR DOCKWEILER,--It is a great disappointment that I am not
able to speak in California this year, I wished so much to say a
word that might be helpful to Senator Phelan. I helped in his
election six years ago, and I wanted to be able to say to those
whom I then addressed, that Phelan had thoroughly made good in
Washington. He has been strong, honest, courageous, loyal to
California and the country, and at every minute he has been at the
service of his constituents. That is much to say, isn't it? Well,
every word is true. ...
These things I know, for I have watched him through the past six
years and for many years before. Indeed, it is more than thirty
years now since we first joined with boyish enthusiasm in the
activities of the Young Men's Democratic League, and always I have
wondered at his willingness to make himself the target of so much
criticism because of his loyalty to convictions that have not
pleased those in political or social power. He thinks; he does not
take orders. And you can rely on his being superior to the
partisan phase of any real issue. This self-respecting, or self-
owned individual is the sort of man we need to promote in our
political life, or else we will soon find ourselves back in the
pre-Roosevelt days of political invertebrates. I found in
Washington the secret of the exceeding great authority which the
older states carry in Congress, they return their Senators and
Congressmen, term after term, and give them opportunity to rise to
positions of eminence in the national legislature. The usefulness
of a Senator is not to be measured by the roundness of his
periods, nor even by the soundness of his ideas. He must pass
through a period of impatient waiting before his status is such
that he can really have the opportunity to have his ideas
considered seriously. By returning men who have been faithful, the
State strengthens itself in Washington and eventually gains
greatly in prestige, as in the case of Julius Kahn. Senator Phelan
has now passed through this initial period of gaining status, and
his future will be one of an assured and much strengthened
position among his colleagues. Not to return Phelan will mean a
loss at Washington that California can ill afford at this critical
time, for in the national mind he is identified with her prime
concerns.
... These are to be most momentous times ... Just where we are
going no one knows, but clearly the people here, as elsewhere, are
bent upon testing the value of Democracy as a cooperative
organization of men and women, and are determined to make of it a
fuller expression of human capacities and hopes. We must feel our
way carefully at such a time, but we must act constructively, else
there will surely come a dangerous radical reaction. Sympathy must
be checked by wisdom, a wise knowledge of man's limitations and
tendencies, that we do not take on burdens we cannot safely carry.
Yet we must dare, and dare purposefully. What can this Democracy
do for men and women--that is the super-question which rises like
Shasta and follows one throughout the day, dominating every
prospect. And the answer must be wrought out of the sober thought
and the proved experience of our statesmen. ... Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
In September, 1920, he wrote,--"Things look dark to me
politically. The little Wilson (as distinguished from the Great
Wilson) is now having his day. Cox is making a manly fight on
behalf of the President's League, but the administration is
sullen, is doing nothing. Cox will be defeated not by those who
dislike him but by those who dislike Wilson and his group. This
seems mighty unjust."
To Hall McAllister
Katonah, September 25 [?], 1920
MY DEAR HALL,--This paper is a concession to my love for color, it
is not yellow, but golden, and to make the touch truly Californian
I should write with a blue pencil.
I cannot write as gaily or as bravely as you did, for I have been
pretty well beaten down to my knees. My nights are so unforgivably
bad--wakened up two or three times, always with this Monster
squeezing my heart in his Mammoth hand--By God, it is something
Dante overlooked ...
Take my advice, dear Hall, and avoid doing any of the things which
the 3793 Doctors I have paid tell me cause this thing--among them
are;--smoking, eating, drinking, swearing, working.
You can recover partially--not wholly under any circumstances--if
you arrive at a state of Nirvana before death. ... Gay life this,
my boy! I've been so wicked and fast and devilish and hoggish and
gluttonous and always rotten and riotous that I needs must spend a
few months in this agony by way of preliminary atonement before I
may get even a chance at purgatory.
You know that sometimes in the most terrific crushing pain, I
laugh, at the thought that my steady years of drive and struggle
to help a lot of people to get justice, or a chance, should be
gloriously crowned by an ironical God with an end that would make
a sainted Christian, in Nero's time, regret his premature taking-
off. ...
Tell that most charming of all women, who is your sister, that her
noble man was in great good fortune; and I envy him because the
Gods showed their love for him even up to the last. The wicked,
torturing devils respected his gay spirit as he passed along and
forgot to fill him full of arrows, poisoned arrows, as he ran the
gauntlet down to the River. Her letters are beauteous reflections
of her thoroughbred soul, and they give delight to Anne and
myself. ... Yours as always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO MRS. GEORGE EHLE
Bethel, October [3], 1920
That is so charming and gracious a letter that it must be answered
within the day, not that any word in kind can be returned, but the
spirit may be echoed. We may be short in words but not in feeling.
Let me tell you, Lady Ehle, about this place. It is Nirvana-in-
the-Wilderness, the Sacred, Serene Spot. Beautiful, for it is a
ridge surrounded by mountains--or "mountings"--of gold and green,
russet and silver. Noiseless, no dogs bark or cats mew or autos
honk. Peaceful--no business. Nothing offends. Isn't that Nirvana?
No poverty. People independent but polite. Children smile back
when you talk to them, and you do. And the sky has clouds that
color and that cast shadows on purpling mountains and stretches of
meadow. Yes, this is one lovely spot over which a man named
Gehring presides, unofficially, modestly, gently; he has given it
purpose for being, for here he does good by healing, and some of
his wealthy patients have put up a handsome inn in his honor--and
they have said so in a bronze tablet over the mantel.
How much good he can do me I cannot say, but he is trying, Oh,
ever so hard to touch my trouble-centre, and I shall give him a
full chance yet awhile.
Wouldn't it be splendid if Shepaug were assured, or any other
place of simple beauty to which we could retire to commune with
the things that, alas, one only discovers to be the really great
things, the worth while things, late in life. Daily would we
foregather beside that stream to build some kind of altar to the
God of Things as we Hope they may sometime Be. ...
Give my regards to the Duke of Saugatuck and tell him that his
picture on horseback is good enough to enlarge--and then I want
one.
And to you, The Ehle, may the peace that gay souls need and seldom
get, and the joy that good souls long for, be with you always. And
do write some more!
F. K. L.
TO BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER
Bethel, [October 28, 1920]
MY DEAR B. I.,--It has been along time since your letter came, but
until now I have not felt that I could write. Most of the time I
have been in pain and I have also been much discouraged over the
condition of my health. No one wants to hear a man talk of his
aches and I haven't much else on my mind. I am beginning to crawl
a bit health-wards, I think; at any rate I am moving on that
assumption.
[Illustration with caption: FRANKLIN K. LANE IN 1917. TAKEN IN
LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK]
What a hell of a condition the land is in politically. Cowardice
and hypocrisy are slated to win, and makeshift and the cheapest
politics are to take possession of national affairs. Better even
obstinacy and ego-mania! Cox, I think, has made a gallant fight.
He is to be beaten because Wilson is as unpopular as he once was
popular. Oh! if he had been frank as to his illness, the people
would have forgotten everything, his going to Paris, his refusal
to deal with the mild Reservationists--everything would have been
swept away in a great wave of sympathy. But he could not be frank,
he who talked so high of faith in the people distrusted them; and
they will not be mastered by mystery. So he is so much less than a
hero that he bears down his party to defeat.
And after election will come revolt in the Republican party, for
it is too many-sided for a long popularity.
I am sorry to be out of it all, but the Gods so willed. I did want
to help Phelan. The country will think that what he has stood for,
as to California matters, especially oil and Japan, has been
repudiated if he is not returned. He was California incarnate in
Washington.
Remember me to the Lady and the Soldier. Always your friend,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To John W. Hallowell
Bethel, November 3, 1920
MY DEAR JACK,--You have so much idle time hanging, dragging,
festooning on round and about your hands that I want to give you a
job, something to do. Eh, what!
I have taken it into my head, caput, cranium, that I will read
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and as the only
copy here is too poorly printed to read, and furthermore as I wish
to own said work myself, I would that you make purchase of same
and send it to me. Now, I do not wish an expensive copy, nor a
large copy, nor a heavy copy. Therefore I think it would be best
to buy a good second-hand set, say in half-leather--perhaps you
can get it in six or eight volumes--and it must not be heavy,
because I read in bed. About the size of an ordinary novel would
be very good, and pretty good sized type--leaded not solid. Yes,
the more I think of a second-hand set, the better I like the idea
--old binding but strong, old paper but light, old type but clear.
Twelve dollars I enclose for a second-hand set. By devoting twenty
dollars worth of time to the search I know you can get a second
hand set for twelve dollars. That is uneconomical, but think of
the fun you will have. I suggest to you that this was the very
thing you needed to do to bring perfect contentment into your
life. Search for Gibbon, pretty backs, good type, light in weight
for twelve dollars. Oh what joy you will have! Really I should be
selfish enough to do it myself but now that I have said so much
about it I can't withdraw this boon. ...
Well, get Gibbon and "with all thy getting get understanding."
F. K. L.
TO JOHN W. HALLOWETT
Bethel, November 12, [1920]
MY DEAR JACK,--I said nothing of the kind to myself. This is what
I said, "Now I want a Gibbon. Not a show-off set but a useful
one--light and small and well bound. How can I get it? Cotter in
New York? What does Cotter know of learning and books of learning?
What interest does New York take in such things anyway? There are
second-hand stores there but they must be filled with novels and
such trumpery. No one in New York ever read Gibbon--ninety-nine
percent never heard of him. So why should I send to New York? No,
Boston is the place. There is the city of the Erudite, the Home of
Lodge, and incidentally of Parkman, Bancroft, Thayer, Morse,
Fiske, and all others who have minds to throw back into the other
days, and make pictures of what has been. Every house there has
its Gibbon, of course, and some must, in the course of nature,
fall into the hands of the dealers. So to Boston,--and who else
but Jack Hallowell who knows what a book is, how in respectability
it should be bound, and what size book is a pleasure and what a
burden. A man of learning, identified with scholarship, through
his athletic course in Harvard, and withal a man of business who
will not pay more than a thing is worth. Ideal! Hence the letter
and consequent trouble to good Jack Hallowell, who as per usual
"done his damnedest for a friend," as Bret Harte says, in writing
a perfect epitaph. ...
The reason I sent twelve dollars needs explanation. I put that
limit because a very handsome edition of eleven volumes sold for
that price to a friend of mine. It was red morocco, tooled, etc.,
and I thought surely twelve dollars would buy something as good as
I needed.
Now you have the whole mysterious story. Make the most of it as
Patrick Henry suggested to George III.
I have your dear Mother's book and will write her when I have read
it. I also have a letter saying that Hoover has named me as
treasurer of his twenty-three million or billion fund. ...
Thank you for your kindness and write me as often as you can. ...
F. K. L.
TO ROBERT LANSING
Bethel, Maine, November 10, [1920]
MY DEAR LANSING,--It is good to see that letter-head, but aren't
you afraid to enter into competition with Mr. Tumulty, who has
now, I see, bought the old Shepard mansion and will settle in
Washington. How do they do it with the high cost of living what it
is? ... The transmutation of brass into gold is becoming a
commonplace.
To-night's paper speaks of Knox as probable Secretary of State.
... Tell me where the opposition is to come from--who are to lead
us? ... All possible leaders have been submerged, squelched,
drowned out, in the past eight years. I wish the whole country had
gone unanimously for Harding. Then we might have started on a
fresh, clean footing to create two parties that represent liberal
and conservative thought. As it is, I think you will see Hearst
and Johnson and La Follette try to capture the radicals of both
parties and make a new party of their own. Then I shall be with
all the rascals I have been fighting since boyhood--the Wall
Street rascals--as against the other group. But maybe the Lord
cares a bit for us after all.
I mend very slowly, but I delight in your recovery and wonder at
it. ... I do beg you will give me all the gossip of Washington
that you can, for I am here in a wilderness, beautiful but not
exciting. As always,
F. K. L.
To Carl Snyder
Bethel, November 13, [1920]
Dear Carl,--This is extremely disagreeable business, this of
repairs and restoration. I suppose I am doing fairly well
considering that I have been more than half a century getting my
gearings askew and awry. But I am taking orders now and say "Thank
you," when I get them. Just when I shall be well enough to take
hold again is not yet discoverable.
Strange how little news there is when you are above the clouds.
One must be local to be interested in ninety percent of what the
papers print. Make me a hermit for a year and I could see things
in the large I believe, and ignore the trifles which obscure real
vision. But a monk must be checked by a butcher. The ideal must be
translated into the possible. "Man cannot live on bread alone"--
nor on manna.
Outside it is snowing beautifully, across an insistent sun, the
fire is crackling and I do not know that I am ill but for the
staring bottles before me.
Give me a line when you have a free minute--and take to your
Beautiful Lady my warm regards.
F. K. L.
To William R. Wheeler
Bethel, 17 [November], 1920
My dear Bill,--...I am mighty sorry to hear about the Lady Alice
Isabel. Funny that these women are like some damn fools, like
myself, and do things too strenuously, and then go bang. Damn that
Irish temperament, anyway! O God, that I had been made a stolid,
phlegmatic, non-nervous, self-satisfied Britisher, instead of a
wild cross between a crazy Irishman, with dreams, desires,
fancies, and a dour Scot, with his conscience and his logical
bitterness against himself,--and his eternal drive!
I can't tell you anything new about myself. I hope it is not a
delusion that I am growing slowly better. I cultivate that idea
anyway. ...