Meissonier's style never did appeal to me. After peering into, and
probing, all known and unknown parts of the Mortal Man, they found
that the heart in one part changed its polarity,--turned over, by
George, or tried to,--hence the Devil's clutch. But why did it do
this vaudevillian act? Bugs, bugs, of course. But where? So they
chased them to their lair in that wicked, nasty-named and most
vulgar organ known as the gall-bladder. Damn the gall-bladder! Out
it must come! On with the knifing! But soft, not so swift. Suppose
the heart should try to play its funny stunt in the midst of the
operation? Or suppose again in this icy weather, pneumonia should
ensue and the naughty heart should take to turning? Eh, what then,
my brave Bucko? "No," they said, "We are experts in eliminating
this same appropriately named organ from the system--eight
thousand times have we done it. It is a twenty-five minute job, A
mere turn of the wrist and out the viper comes. And it never comes
back! This is positively its last appearance, save as a memento
for the morbid-minded in a bottle of alcohol. But hearts that do
somersaults and lungs that choke up, fill us with fear. So out
with the tonsils where bugs accumulate and men decay, and then off
with you to California where bugs degenerate and men rejuvenate.
Then come back when the sun shines and the trees begin to burgeon
and the trick will be done. Hold yourself where you are, grow
better if you can, and we'll have to take the risk of the tumbling
heart, but the pneumonia risk will be gone."
Thus saith the Prophets! And this day, therefore, will be spent
with the Master of the mysterious fluoroscope, who reverses Edward
Everett Hale and looks "in and not out," and with the dentist who
must fill a pesky tooth, and then with the surgeon who tears out
tonsils. Rather a full day, eh? And after two days in hospital, or
three, over the hills to 8 Chester Place, Los Angeles,--by no
means a poor-house,--but alas! carrying the malevolent bugs and
their nesting place with me. Then I shall rest, "and faith I shall
need it, lie down for an aeon or two, till the Master of all good
workmen shall put me to work anew."
I am disappointed. I would take the risk if it were left to me.
But I shall go West--why did those soldier boys ever use that
phrase with such sinister meaning, or did it signify a better land
to them? I shall go West in good hope that I shall return, and
meantime will try to develop a strong propaganda in favor of race
suicide in the land of the bothering bacteria, Adios.
F. K. L.
To John G. Gehring
Rochester, Minnesota, January 13, [1921]
MY DEAR PADRE,--I wrote you an impressionistic sketch of what the
politicians call the "local situation," a couple of days since.
... It is subject to attack on every possible ground as to
details, for no man can know from it what these doctors found. But
it is a perfect picture from the artist's standpoint, because it
produces the result on the viewer or reader that is truth, and
that result is a large, purple befuddlement. I am whole, but I
have a pain. ...
After I had practically been declared one hundred per cent
pluperfect I gave the electric cardiograph man a picture or
exhibition performance under an attack. This revealed to him a
change in polarity in the current passing through, which signified
something, but what that something was, other than that I was
having a spasm, I don't know. ...
The smug, mysterious gentleman who made this picture was much
pleased, apparently at nothing more than that he had proved that I
had a clutch of the heart, which I had announced, by wire, before
arriving here.
Am I impatient or am I a damn fool?
Well, with my tonsils out I am in Royal Baking Powder condition
and tomorrow we start for California. I cannot hope to be out
there till May or June, when you would come. But Heaven knows I'd
like to introduce you to the Yosemite! ...
Do you know I am beginning to admire myself. Now many have thought
that that was my favorite sport. But I can assure you that no one
ever felt more humble than I have, any appearance to the contrary
being a bluff for success--effect. But now that I have been wisely
and scrupulously and unscrupulously examined by the most exalted
rulers of the Inner Temple, and they pronounce me all that man
should be, why shouldn't I strut some? But, damn it, strutting
brings that Devil's clutch--and a man cannot be anything more
strutty than a dish-rag then. In William James you will find a
questionnaire, "Why do I believe in immortality? 'Because I think
I'm just about ready to begin to live.'" There speaks self-
justifying age--I'm there, too.
I'd love to look on Bethel this morning, and see what your poet-
partner calls the hills in their wine bath. Good luck.
LANE
To Lathrop Brown
Los Angeles, [January] 15, [1921]
MY DEAR LATHROP,--I have yours of the eleventh. First question, as
to men and women for the Executive Committee,
Answer: Get men who can make a program, something that the party
can push, outside Congress, if too cowardly in. People who don't
want anything, if possible.
Think of these! (I don't say they will do, but they stand for
something.)
Charles W. Eliot. Benjamin Ide Wheeler. (Ex-President of the
University of California. Ex-Chairman, Democratic Committee,
Elmira, New York.) E. M. House. Frank L Cobb. John W. Davis.
Robert Lansing. R. Walton Moore. (Congressman from Virginia, big
fellow.) Gavin McNab. Governor Parker, of Louisiana. James D.
Phelan. Van-Lear Black.
For solid thought I'd choose out of that bunch--Eliot and Moore.
For cleverness--Black and McNab. For diplomacy--House and Davis.
For progressiveness--House and Parker. For Conservative Democracy
--Wheeler and Lansing. For writing ability--Cobb and Eliot.
I know no women who think, particularly. ...
The kind of publicity we need is the advocacy by the National
Committee, and by Democrats in Congress of first class measures,
known to be Democratic measures, part of a program.
I'll tell you how to get all the publicity you want when I see
you--or White--a new kind, cheap, but requiring brains. ...
F. K L.
To Lathrop Brown
Los Angeles, January, [1921]
DEAR LATHROP,--(1) You are right as to standardization. The Devil
devised it as a highway to socialism. It is the Bible of the great
Tribe of Flatfoot, not for artists like you and myself. And
speaking of programs, please read what Wells says in his first
volume of Outline of History, on David, Solomon, Moses. It will
delight your anti-semitic soul. ...
Yes, standardization is like all else, good--for a distance. The
whole bally outfit of life is a matter of balance, maintained by
war among the unintelligent bacilli and other primitives, and by
will among men (goat feed for men, eh?) But do you get my point?
Something to it!
(2) George White will be eaten up first thing he knows, unless he
moves. Your friend McAdoo is here declining the next nomination
daily, speaking much, and, I understand, well. ... Why doesn't G.
W. get Frank Cobb and Hooker, of the Springfield Republican, and
Van-Lear Black, and Senator Walsh, and Phelan, and Congressman
Walton Moore together, or any other group, and put up his plan and
ask them what they think of it tentatively,--just a quiet chat,
but start.
He doesn't need to resign, if he can get someone as a quiet
organizer "who will give all his time" to take up that job under
him, with sub-organizers. Who is this genius who can organize
inorganic matter, and give it life? Thought He was dead sometime!
"Wanted--A Miracle Man who can overcome a majority of seven
million votes with a hearty handshake and a warm brown eye. Need
have no program, no money. Must be a hypnotist who can make the
people forget a few things and believe a few things that are not
true. Must be able by reciting poetry to make the cunning
capitalist see that he is safer in the hands of the Democrats than
elsewhere, and at the same time educate the worker by a pass of
the hand to know that it is decent to stay bought. Must have
received the Gift of Tongues on the Day of Pentecost, so as to
talk Yiddish, in New York; Portuguese and Gaelic, in
Massachusetts; Russian and German, in Chicago; Scandinavian, in
the Northwest; Cotton and Calhoun, in the South; John Brown and
wheat, in Kansas; gold and Murphy, on 14th Street; and translate
Jesus Christ into Bolshevism, Individualism, Capitalism, Lodgeism,
Wilsonism! Must be as honest as old Cleveland and as clear of
purpose as Abraham Lincoln."
Put this want ad. in the papers and send me, by freight car, the
replies. With my warmest,
F. K. L.
To Adolph C. Miller
Los Angeles, January 26, [1921]
DEAR ADOLPH,--I see that Harding [Footnote: Governor Harding of
the Federal Reserve Board--a rumor of resignation.] is to leave
you, and this is a note of sympathy. What will you do? Poor chap!
I know the satisfaction you have had out of working with him and
now he follows Warburg, Delano, and Strauss. By Jove, that's why
we can't make things go as other countries do--because we can't
give our people enough to live on. This is at once the meanest and
most generous of Republics. Mean collectively, generous
individually.
He will wait until after March 4th. "Right oh!" I expect you to
have some say as to his successor, especially as to the new
Governor. And if you can't work with the new man you can lift your
skirts and skip! Freedom of movement, assured as to all by Adam
Smith, is exclusively the prerogative of the fortunate few. Don't
be downhearted! You can't be as badly off as you were for several
years. Just think how unlucky I am as compared with you, and pat
yourself on the back and take one of the old time struts. Good
belly! Good brains! Good pocket-book! Good friends near you! Good
dog to walk with in the woods--and woods in which you can walk!
Good house, with your own books to look at you friendly-like. Oh
boy, rejoice and be glad!
February 17, [1921]
We are most terribly disappointed. Your promised visit was a
bright spot,--a sunshiny place--to which we have looked forward as
to nothing else since we came here. Well, life is a series of such
jars, and child-like I submit, but am not reconciled.
... Are you coming later? How is Mary? We really seem far away
from our friends. The land is beautiful, but friends convert a
shack into a palace, a desert into a heaven.
F. K. L.
To John G. Gehring
Pasadena, near Paradise, February 18
Before breakfast this morning, indeed before dressing, I sent you
a message which was a combined confession, apologia, report, and
appeal. I said, "I have done wrong, I apologize, I am slightly
better, and I hope and pray you will not become downhearted." I
also promised to write and here I am at it. But you would have had
this letter just as early anyway, for this morning was to be yours
and mine. All other mornings for two weeks and more have belonged
to someone else. I have been pretending to work, by going to the
office each day. And last night I said good-bye to the Napoleon of
our institution, who took his private car and rolled away to
Mexico, to Galyeston first, thence by private yacht to Tampico,
there to see his properties and spend two or three weeks.
... They desired us to go greatly, and ours would have been every
possible comfort that one can have while traveling, ... but the
tyrant Anne thought that as I was picking up a bit it was wrong to
change conditions, and I yielded, hardly against my judgment, but
strongly against my desire.
So here I am, the first hour after release, sitting on the porch
of a villa, looking across a valley at amethyst mountains, crowned
with a sprinkling of blue and white snow. The noises that come to
me are not raucous;--the twitter of birds, a rooster crowing, a
well-pump throbbing its heart out, the shouts of some children at
play, a distant school bell, with no silver in its alloy, however,
the swish of a wood-sawing machine in some back-yard. So my ears
are not lonesome. Immediately before me is the gray-lavender bole
of a tall eucalyptus, not a leaf or branch for fifty feet, and
then a drooping cascade of blue-green feathers. Beyond it a few
feet a red-blue eucalyptus, sturdy, branching almost at the ground
and in blossom. These stand near the border of a drive which is
marked by a cypress hedge, trimmed and proper, and beyond the
drive, on the front of the terrace are magnolia and iron-wood and
avocado and palm and spruce, rising up out of beds of carnations
and geraniums, jasmine and pansies (all violet), and cherokee
roses, five-petaled, white with golden centers, and rose colored--
(the wild rose with a university education, a year or two in
Italy, and the care of a good maid). While beyond this terrace are
orange, and tangerine, and lemon, and grapefruit with their green,
yellow, and deep red-golden fruit pendant; and still further on, a
fringe of blossoming pear trees tell you that this is not the
tropics after all. The breeze is a gentle woman's hand, a soft
touch, kindly, tender, emotional, but not disturbing. It is not
lotus-eating time. I don't know that that time ever comes here.
Autos whisk through the woods, buildings are going up, the air is
dry and has tang; it has challenge in it, but it does not give off
the heady champagne of the air that the snow breathes out on your
Millbrook hillside.
I remember as I looked from my window at the sunset at Bethel
saying to myself, "Can there be any fairer spot than this?" And
this morning as I saw the sun rise into the pink and blue of the
sky, empurpling the shadowed hills and splashing rose leaves on
the snowy mountains, I again said "Is there anything lovelier,
anywhere?" Great blessing, these catholic eyes! Should the heart
be equally catholic? There is a real problem in philosophy and
sociology for you!
And now that you know how happily circumstanced I am as to
environment your doctorial demand is for something as to the
behavior of the organs and nerves which we call the physical man.
Well, I can't tell you much. I do not rise and walk half a block
without that trigger being pulled, but the explosion is not
dynamite, rather poor black powder, I should say. If I walk half a
dozen blocks I stop a half a dozen times, and once or twice nibble
at a precious pellet of nitro. At night I am wakened as of yore,
but the agonizing, crushing pains do not come every night. ... I
eat prunes and bran biscuit and coffee for breakfast; a bit of
cooked fruit (and that in this land of oranges and alligator pears
and ripe raspberries!), chicken and green peas, and bran biscuit
and tea for lunch; a couple of green vegetables and bran biscuit
and a small black, for dinner. And all this I write with a supreme
sense of virtue, which Simon Stylites or St. Benedict could not
more than parallel. As to smoking--a pipe, generous in size but of
the mildest possible tobacco, after breakfast. A mild, large cigar
after lunch, and pause here and worship--no cigar after dinner.
(But this latter is a Lenten innovation. I would not have you
think I am preparing for immediate ascension.)
As to treatment, an osteopath and a Christian Scientist are my
present complement. Each morning the former, and each evening the
latter. The former to gratify myself, the latter to gratify a dear
friend who "believed and was saved." The osteo is rational, the C.
S., with limitations and reservations. ...
The C. S. is a woman, the sister of an artist I used to know. If
she did not ask or expect that I believe certain things, we would
get on better. I can believe in God as the Principle of Life, that
seems scientific. I am willing to call Him Spirit, that is
Christian. That He is Supreme in the Universe, I admit. That sin
and sickness may with further light be overmastered I do not deny;
physical death, of course, seems to me a thing not worth bothering
about. But that God is all good, I cannot asseverate in the living
presence of a few Devils whom I know, unless I deny that He is
omnipresent and omnipotent, or unless I say that Bad is Good. God
cannot be good and all powerful without being also responsible for
Bad, and therefore be both Good and Bad. This I can believe, and
it brings me to Emerson's transcendentalism, which is set forth in
the Sphinx--"Deep Love lieth under these pictures of Time, which
fade in the light of their meaning sublime." In a word we are
growing into the Good. The Bad is not the ultimate, but is none
the less real. This is better than Manicheism, the Miltonian
contest between the Good Spirit and the Bad, which Wells also in
his Invisible King presents; a simple theory, understandable but
not to my mind subject to careful scrutiny. There is but one God,
one Force, one Principle, one Spirit, and it is working its way
through, expressing itself as best it can. And Evil is a partial
view, one phase of undevelopment, the muck through which, by God's
own law, we must come; and indeed He could not have sent us any
other way. This means that He is bound, too. Is this supposable?
Omnipresent? Yes! All pervading! In all! But Omnipotent? No, not
in the sense that He could change the Order of Things, for He is
the Order of Things Himself. Is there even in Him complete Freedom
of Will, freedom to make a world other than this? One wishes, in a
sense, to say so, but the horror of it! for then He is responsible
for the cruelty of the ant-heap, the feeding of the carnivorous
upon the vegetable eaters, the preying and persecution of the
malevolent upon the kindly--and He could have made it all
otherwise! With a Free Will He could have brought growth without
pain, being omnipotent. Here we see God as a monster,--responsible
for sweat shops and the Marne, in the sense that His will could
have averted these things. So I say God is not Good, save in the
sense that He is that sunrise this morning. But night cometh, when
thieves break through and steal. More sunlight--that is the
meaning of the phrase "God is Good"--a belief in a tendency, in
the temporality of darkness, of night, a sureness that the day
will come and "There will be no night there."
This is a long disquisition, but I just had to get it out of my
system; yet I can't, it bothers, and confuses, and perplexes, and
hinders, I believe. Better brush it away for practical purposes
and have the Will to Believe, for thence cometh strength.
Pragmatically C. S. works out with certain people; and to them it
is Truth. I wish it were so with my doubting mind, that I could
believe. I am willing to be cured tho' I do not understand and
cannot believe, and this they say they can do. But it has not been
done with me.
Lunch broke into this discourse, and then a walk. This time on the
other side of the house, the other side of the hill. There I found
a new world. Palms, huge ones, thirty feet across, with their dead
branches strewing the ground, making a coarse woven carpet; and
pines, large ones, yet not so gigantic as yours on the road beyond
the creek; and acacia in full golden bloom, glorious, yet modest
tree, a very rare, non-self-assertive tree, a truly Christian
tree, beautiful but not prideful. Bamboo in great clumps, erect,
yielding but not to be broken--wise, tenacious orientals! And I
walked on the off-cast seed of the pepper, and beside cacti higher
than my head with spears of crimson, and across a sweep of lawn
over which oranges had been dropped, by the generosity of an up-
hill row of trees that were saying, "We must make room for the
next generation." The flowers (oxalis) and leaves I enclose made a
mat, close clinging to the earth, a mat of white, red, and
lavender resting on these clover-like leaves that rested in turn
directly on the ground. And all about, a hundred plants I did not
know, into which my footsteps sent quail and rabbit, that did not
fear me really but could not quite say that Man is Love.
I have written you a long line, may it serve for a time as a word
also to your dear Lady, whose letter and rare bit of verse I have
also received. I do hope that you soon master whatever ails you.
Don't lose faith in yourself, above all things. Believe that you
are all that your friends believe you to be--a Civilized Medicine
Man. Be as deluded as we are. Affectionately,
LANE
To John W. Hallowell
Los Angeles, February 21, 1921 MY DEAR JACK,--It is Sunday
morning, very early; the sun is trying to get out of bed, a
mocking bird is hailing its effort with great gurgling. I am
sitting near an open window looking down into orange trees, which
are a very dark shadow, and I am just as happy in my heart as I
can be with a bum heart, and no home, and a scattered family. But
--! Bad word that "but."
Roots we all have and we must not be torn up from them and flung
about as if we were young things that could take hold in any soil.
I have been, all America has been, too indifferent to roots--home
roots, school roots, work roots. ... We should love stability and
tradition as well as love adventure and advancement.
Your new job interests me, but I wonder if you will go with the
Secretary of Commerce [Hoover], ... I guess he did right. But
unless he gets to be the leading adviser he'll have to get out.
For I'm afraid we are to see too much politics--Republican
Burlesonism in the saddle. Government by unanimous consent is not
practicable, and it looked as if this were Harding's motto until
Hoover's appointment. Hoover will be the man to whom the country
will look for some guidance along progressive lines, and the
country will expect too much, more than any man can deliver.
Please tell your dear Mother that I have her book, and last night
read two chapters. I know Bok and did not think him capable of
such a literary work, or that he had such character as his book
reveals. ... My love to the Troop, and write just as often as you
can.
F. K. L.
To Curt G. Pfeiffer
Pasadena, 22 [February, 1921]
MY DEAR OLD PFEIFFER,--I have treated you shamefully. Yes, I have,
don't protest! But I have been pretending to be busy. Mr. Doheny
wanted me to go to Mexico, and Anne did not want me to go, and I
have had a hard time. They have gone and we have come out here
with Mrs. Severance, in the loveliest hillside spot you ever saw.
Flowers and trees all about and mountains in the distance.
Wonderful land!
To-day I celebrated G. W.'s birthday by taking on a new doctor.
... Thought I had escaped from doctors but it is not so to be. ...
This is all my news. I do wish I were there to talk politics with
you. Poor Harding! He will suffer the politicians, I fear, till
they undo him. ...
The Germans seem to have recovered their audacity. They should
have been driven into their own land and then some. I am not for
revenge nor for their paralyzing, but just reparation they should
pay. Perhaps things have been botched, I do not trust Briand. I'd
trust Hoover to get all they could pay, and he's the only one I
know who could be just and at the same time sensible in method,
but he can't be used where he should be used. ...
March 31
... You are a delight and joy to a thirsty man, a true water
carrier, you give of the water of life. For you know that men
shall not live by bread alone. Not only words of wisdom, sage
counsel, come from you, but there is a heart behind which does not
wane with the years, but on the contrary grows stronger and more
generous. I look forward to returning to New York to be able once
again to feel with you the pleasure of an intellectual
companionship, wherein the mind is so refined as to be emotionally
sympathetic. You would take the greatest joy out of the beauty in
which I am living. ... The night is fragrant (Do you remember
telling me of that Japanese criterion?) with orange, wisteria, and
jasmine. Oh, this is exquisite country, if I only had health! But
there is little beauty where pain is, and my pain holds on even
when I was with my brother on his farm, eighty acres, south of San
Jose, tucked in the foothills--raises nothing but kindliness and
a few vegetables and some hay. It is the sweetest place in its
spirit I have ever felt, and lovely physically, too. I wish I
could get you to go out there with me. Put up a comfortable adobe
on the knob of a hill with a wide prospect and then make things
grow, including our own souls. ...
I'm going back there in a week or two, then East, I hope, to Ned's
wedding. ... The girl is all a girl should be, I believe. Smaller
than he is, a tiny thing in fact, very gentle in voice and manner,
sweet natured, musical, wholesome.
... I still dream of that place on the Shepaug river, in
Connecticut, where you think I would be lonesome. A winter here
with George and a summer there with you, would quite suit me. ...
Well, write me, for books are not old friends after all, are they?
Forever and ever yours,
F. K. L.
Writing of the days of their youth Pfeiffer said later,
"Friendships are inexplicable, they defy analysis, but whatever it
was that we might be doing, we were usually in harmony about it. I
can only explain it by saying that we liked each other. We liked
each other just as we were, and we knew each other with intimacy
that deepened with the years, and never disappointed us. The magic
circle came later to include others, and they were accepted and
appreciated with the same affection and trust. ... It is a
singular and beautiful thing that such a multiple and intimate
relationship should have survived throughout all of our lives.
Perhaps it was because we were friends without capitulation. ...
"Some of us did not meet again, after that first period, for
years, but whenever we did meet, it was always in the spirit of
the early days. A few words would tell us what we knew of the
latest doings of the rest, and we would then 'carry on' just as if
there had never been a break in our intercourse. The strength of
our joint memories, based on our youthful experiences in common
and added to from time to time, grew with the years."
To John G. Gehring
Pasadena, February 24, [1921]