Statesmen, if you please, independent, away above politics.
Doesn't it seem to you that we are coming to be altogether too
dependent on the President? That office will be ruined. Every one
with a sore thumb has come into the habit of running to the
President. This is all wrong, all wrong. He cannot do his job well
now. And he is only nominally doing it, and only nominally has
been doing it for years. But each month seems to add to his duties
as arbiter of everything from clothes to strikes, from baseball to
disarmament.
I see a tremendous field for a body of a few ripe minds who would
talk so little, and so wisely, and so collectively, that they
could get and hold the ear of the country, governmental and
otherwise.
I outlined for Mezes, in your old job, a series of lectures by
Americans who have done things on Why America is Worth While--and
he has expanded it into a whole course on America, so that I
believe he will have something new and great--teaching history,
geology, art, everything, by the history of that thing in America,
and how it came to come here, or be here, or what it means here.
Well, I have written you a book and must stop--I don't know where
to address you but will send this to the Times. Please remember me
to Mr. Ochs--who can see things, and here's hoping it won't be
long before we meet. Yours always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To James H. Barry San Francisco Star
Rochester, Minnesota, May 5, [1921]
MY DEAR JIM,--I have nothing of importance to say, except that I
am to be operated on tomorrow and hope for the best, for Dr. Will
Mayo is to do the operating, and I am not in a very run-down
condition.
I find myself quite serene, for I can look forward even to the
very worst result with the feeling that there is no one to meet me
over there to whom I've done any wrong. And while I haven't done
my best, my score hasn't been blank. I honestly believe I've added
a farthing or two to the talent that was given me.
My brother George is here, with his splendid philosophy and his
Scotch songs; and Ned, my boy, and his bride have just come back,
so that Anne and I are very well content that things are just as
they should be. I go to St. Mary's Hospital where they have nuns
for nurses, and when time comes for recuperation I shall go to the
near-by estate of my old friend, Severance, the big St. Paul
lawyer, whom I have known these thirty years.
I hope, my dear old man, that you will find new occupation soon
that will give you use for your pen, and sterling love of justice.
My regards, sincere and hearty to your family, and my other
friends.
F. K. LANE
To Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Rochester, Minnesota, May 5, [1921]
Just because I like you very much, and being a very old man dare
to say so, I am sending this line, which has no excuse in its
news, philosophy or advice; has no excuse, in fact, except what
might be called affection, but of course this being way past the
Victorian era, no one admits to affections! I will not belittle my
own feeling by saying that I have a wife who thinks you the best
Eastern product--and probably she'd move to strike out the word
"Eastern." At any rate, I think I should tell you myself that I am
to be operated on tomorrow, by Dr. Will Mayo, and am glad of it.
We shall see what we shall see.
I find myself quite serene about the matter, altho' I believe my
heart is so bad that they fear giving ether and will keep me
conscious if they can, applying only a local anesthetic.
I'd like to have Anne's perfect sureness as to the future, but
lacking it, I do not look forward with fear, even if the worst
should happen. I've never done a wrong to any man or woman or
child that I can now recall--but maybe my memory is failing.
My boy and his bride came back this morning--happy! Oh, so happy!
And my "best beloved" brother who sings Scotch songs is here--a
great philosopher whom you would deeply admire--and our friends
the Severances of St. Paul, thirty year-old friends, they come
over tonight. So we will be a merry, merry company. I'd love to
see you and the gay Cavalier, but let us hope it won't be long
till we meet! Au revoir!
F. K. L.
To friends who had telegraphed and written urgently for news
May 11, 1921
It is Wednesday afternoon and I am now sitting up in bed talking
to my good friend, Cotter. Until yesterday I did not clearly
visualize any one thing in this room and did not know that it had
a window, except that there was a place that noise came through,
but I did know that it had a yellow oak door that stared at me
with its great, big, square eye, all day and all night.
Last Friday, you see, about ten in the morning, I took the step
that I should have taken months, yes, years ago. I was stretched
on a stiff, hard table, my arms were clamped down and in three-
quarters of an hour I had my appendix and my gall bladder removed,
which latter was a stone quarry and the former a cesspool. Today,
most tentatively, I crawled on to a chair and ate my first
mouthful of solid food. But four days ago I managed to shave
myself, and I am regarded as pretty spry.
I have seen death come to men in various ways, some rather novel
and western. I once saw a man hanged. And I have seen several men
shot, and came very near going out that way myself two or three
times, but always the other fellow aimed poorly. I was being shot
at because I was a newspaper man, and I should have been shot at.
There must be public concern in what is printed, as well as its
truth, to justify it. That is something that newspapers should get
to know in this country. After the earthquake in San Francisco, I
saw walls topple out upon a man. And I have had more intimate
glimpses still of the picturesque and of the prosaic ways by which
men come to their taking off.
But never before have I been called upon deliberately to walk into
the Valley of the Shadow and, say what you will, it is a great
act. I have said, during the past months of endless examination,
that a man with little curiosity and little humor and a little
money who was not in too great pain could enjoy himself studying
the ways of doctors and nurses, as he journeyed the invalid's
path. It was indeed made a flowery path for me, as much as any
path could be in which a man suffered more humiliation and
distress and thwarting and frustration, on the whole, than he did
pain.
But here was a path, the end of which I could not see. I was not
compelled to take it. My very latest doctor advised me against
taking it. I could live some time without taking it. It was a bet
on the high card with a chance to win, and I took it.
I undressed myself with my boy's help, in one of the hospital
rooms, and then arraying myself in my best suit of pajamas and an
antique samurai robe which I use as a dressing gown, submitted
myself to being given a dose of dazing opiate, which was to do its
work in about fifteen minutes. I then mounted a chair and was
wheeled along the corridor to the elevator, stopping meantime to
say "adieu" to my dear ones, who would somehow or other insist
upon saying "good-bye," which is a different word. I was not to be
given the usual anesthetic, because my heart had been cutting up
some didos, so I must take a local anesthetic which Was to be
administered by a very celebrated Frenchman. I need not tell you
that this whole performance was managed with considerable eclat,
and Doctor Will Mayo, probably the first surgeon of the world, was
to use the knife; and in the gallery looking on were Doctor
Finney, of Johns Hopkins, Doctor Billings, of Chicago, Doctor
Vaughan of the Michigan University, and others. On the whole, it
was what the society reporter would call a recherche affair. The
local anesthetic consists of morphine and scopolamin. It is
administered directly by needle to the nerves that lead to those
particular parts which are to be affected by the operation. This I
watched myself with the profoundest interest. It was painful,
somewhat, but it was done with the niceness and precision that
make this new method of anesthesia a real work of art. I should
think that the Japanese, with their very rare power at embroidery,
might come to be past masters in this work. There were some
insertions very superficial and some extremely deep. Over the
operator's head, there were a half dozen heads peering intently at
each move he made, while the patient himself was free to lift his
head and look down and see just what was being done. I did not
test myself, as I should have, to see whether I was paralyzed in
any part.
Just when this performance came to a head, Doctor Mayo came in and
said, "Well, I am going in for something." I said, "That's right,
and I hope you will get it."
His statement did not conclusively prove confidence that he would
find the cause of my trouble by going in. ... I knew there could
be no such definiteness, but I said to myself, "He will get it, if
it's there."
For two days I had had knowledge that this operation was to take
place at this time, and my nerves had not been just as good as
they should have been. Those men who sleep twelve hours perfectly
before being electrocuted have evidently led more tranquil lives
than I have, or have less concern as to the future. Ah, now I was
to know the great secret! For forty years I had been wondering,
wondering. Often I had said to myself that I should summon to my
mind when this moment came, some words that would be somewhat a
synthesis of my philosophy. Socrates said to those who stood by,
after he had drunk the hemlock, "No evil can befall a good man,
whether he be alive or dead." I don't know how far from that we
have gone in these twenty-four hundred years. The apothegm,
however, was not apposite to me, because it involved a declaration
that I was a good man, and I don't know anyone who has the right
so to appreciate himself. And I had come to the conclusion that
perhaps the best statement of my creed could be fitted into the
words, "I accept," which to me meant that if in the law of nature
my individual spirit was to go back into the great Ocean of
Spirits, my one duty was to conform. "Lead Kindly Light" was all
the gospel I had. I accepted. I made pretense to put out my hand
in submission and lay there.
"All through, doctor?"
"Yes, doctor."
"Very well, we will proceed."
And I was gradually pushed through the hall into the operating
room. The process there was lightning-like. I was in torture.
"Lift me up, lift me up."
"What for?"
"I have one of those angina pains and I must ease it by getting up
and taking some nitro."
That had been my practice, but I did not reason that never before
had the pain come on my right side.
"Give him a whiff of ether." The tenderest arms stole around my
head and the softest possible voice--Ulysses must have heard it
long ago--"Now do take a deep breath." I resisted. I had been told
that I would see the performance.
"Please do, breathe very deeply--just one good deep breath." That
pain was burning the side out of me. I tried to get my hand up to
my side. Of course it was tied down. I swore.
"Oh Christ! This is terrible."
"It will stop if you will reach for a big breath,"--and I resigned
myself. Men who are given the third degree have no stronger will
than mine. I knew I was helpless. I must go through. I must
surrender to that Circean voice.
I heard the doctor in a commonplace monotone say, "This is an
unusual case--"--the rest of this sentence I never heard.
There was a long ray of gray light leading from my bed to my door.
I had opened my eyes. "I had not died." I had come through the
Valley.
"I wonder what he got."
In the broad part of the ray was my wife smiling, and stretching
out to that unreachable door were others whom I recognized, all
smiling. Things were dim, but my mind seemed definite.
"What did he get?" I had expected eternal mysteries to be
unraveled. Either I would know, or not know, and I would not know
that I would not know.
"He got a gall-bladder filled with stones and a bad appendix, and
now you are to lie still."
Then to this the drama had come, the drama beyond all dramas--a
handful of brownish secretions and a couple of pieces of morbid
flesh!! Ah me!
I am doing well, cared for well, as happy as can be; have had none
of my angina pains since the operation. And as I lie here, I
contemplate [making] a frieze--a procession of doctors and nurses
and internes, of diagnosticians and technicians and experts and
mechanics and servitors and cooks--all, the great and the small,
in profile. They are to look like those who have made their
pretenses before me during the past year;--the solemn and the
stupid; the kindly, the reckless; the offhand; the erudite, the
practical; the many men with tubes and the many men with
electrical machines. Old Esculapius must begin the procession but
the Man with the Knife, regnant, heroic size, must end it.
What a great thing, what a pride, to have the two men of greatest
constructive imagination and courage in surgery in the world as
Americans, Dr. Charles and Dr. Will Mayo.
To Alexander Vogelsang
Rochester, Minnesota, May 14, [1921]
This is a line by my own hand, dear Aleck, just to show you that I
am still this much master of myself. ...
I am going through much pain. Inside I am a great boil. But Nature
is doing all she can, and I am helping. They think me a right
model sort of patient, for I made a showing of exceptional
recovery. When T.R. shaved the day after, I said, "Hip Hip!" Well,
I done it too! I guess as how I haven't been so very bad a boy all
these fifty-seven years or I couldn't play as good as "par" at
this game, and they say they have no better record than mine on
the books.
The National Geographic Society did a nice thing. Today I got a
resolution of the most sympathetic kind from them. Some gentlemen
still alive, eh?
I dictated a bit of a thing about my experience the other day to
Cotter--something to send off to the chaps who wrote or wired--and
sent you one. I hope it wasn't soft or slobby. Did you think it
was all right to come from a sick bed?
It will be three weeks or more yet of hospital, and then much of
recuperation. But I have no complaint. I feel a faith growing in
me, and I may yet draw my sword in some good fight.
Affectionately,
FRANK
To John W. Hallowell
Rochester, Minnesota, May 14, 1921
DEAR JACK,--I've been down into the Valley since I heard from you,
but I'm up once more and with new light in my eye, new faith in my
heart, more sense of the things that count and those that don't.
And affection, love for the good thing of any kind; loyalty, even
mistaken loyalty, these are the things that the Gods treasure.
They live longest. So I turn to give you my hand, dear boy,
[Illustration with caption: LANE PEAK IN RAINIER NATIONAL PARK]
I was most badly infected, but I really never felt better than
when I stepped out of the auto on to the hospital steps. And it
took some nerve for me to say, "Go to it," under such
circumstances. (I am patting myself on the back a bit now.)
Well, Glory be!--that step is taken and now I must fight to get
fit. They say I am making as good a record as a boy, as to
recovery, so all my Scotch whiskies, and big cigars and late
nights with you politicians have not ruined me.
Say dear things to your Mother for me, Jack, and give greetings to
all your family.
F. K. L.
To Robert Lansing
Rochester, 14 [May, 1921]
MY DEAR LANSING,--I am disturbed because you may be disturbed. As
I lie in bed I read and am read to, and some of the papers do not
treat you decently. The very ones that were loudest in their
declarations against W. W. at every stage, now suggest that you
might have quit his service if you didn't like it. I hope it will
not get under your skin ...
What comfort you would have given the enemy if you had resigned!
Have they thought of that? I came to the brink when the President
blew up my coal agreement to save three or four hundred million
dollars for the people, But I was stopped by the thought, "Give no
comfort to Berlin." ... Good night and good luck.
F.K.L.
Manuscript fragment written May 17, 1921, and found in his room.
Franklin K. Lane died May 18, 1921.
And if I had passed into that other land, whom would I have
sought--and what should I have done?
No doubt, first of all I would have sought the few loved ones
whose common life with me had given us matter for talk, and whom I
had known so well that I had loved dearly. Then perhaps there
might have [been] some gratifying of a cheap curiosity, some
searching and craning after the names that had been sierras along
my skyline. But I know now there would have been little of that.
It would not have been in me to have gone about asking Alexander
and Cromwell little questions. For what would signify the trifle
which made a personal fortune, that put a new name up upon some
pilaster men bowed to as they passed? Were Aristotle there,
holding in his hand the strings and cables that tied together all
the swinging and surging and lagging movements of the whole
earth's life--an informed, pregnant Aristotle,--Ah! there would be
the man to talk with! What satisfaction to see him take, like
reins from between his fingers the long ribbons of man's life and
trace it through the mystifying maze of all the wonderful
adventure of his coming up. The crooked made straight. The
'Daedalian plan' simplified by a look from above--smeared out as
it were by the splotch of some master thumb that made the whole
involuted, boggling thing one beautiful, straight line. And one
could see, as on a map of ocean currents, the swing and movements
of a thousand million years. I think that I would not expect that
he could tell the reason why the way began, nor where it would
end. That's divine business, yet for the free-going of the mind it
would lend such impulse, to see clearly. Thus much for curiosity!
The way up which we've stumbled.
But for my heart's content in that new land, I think I'd rather
loaf with Lincoln along a river bank. I know I could understand
him. I would not have to learn who were his friends and who his
enemies, what theories he was committed to, and what against. We
could just talk and open out our minds, and tell our doubts and
swap the longings of our hearts that others never heard of. He
wouldn't try to master me nor to make me feel how small I was. I'd
dare to ask him things and know that he felt awkward about them,
too. And I would find, I know I would, that he had hit his shin
just on those very stumps that had hit me. We'd talk of men a lot,
the kind they call the great. I would not find him scornful. Yet
boys that he knew in New Salem would somehow appear larger in
their souls, than some of these that I had called the great. His
wise eyes saw qualities that weighed more than smartness. Yes, we
would sit down where the bank sloped gently to the quiet stream
and glance at the picture of our people, the negroes being
lynched, the miners' civil war, labor's hold ups, employers'
ruthlessness, the subordination of humanity to industry,--
THE END