XIV Friends and the Great Hope
1921
Need for Democratic Program—Religious Faith—Men who have Influenced
Thought—A Sounder Industrial Life —A Super-University for Ideas
—“I Accept”
—Fragment
To Mrs. Philip C. Kaujfmann
Rochester, Minnesota, January 1,1921
To that little Fairy with whom a young fellow named Frank Lane used to wander in the woods, hunting the homes of the Fairies,— Greetings on her birthday! Has she found where they live? I believe she has. They live where eyes are bright with love, and hands are gentle and kind, where feelings are not hurt and there is song hummed, and Play, a very real God, still lives,
… I think that we have got to see each other some how, somewhere, because life is passing awfully fast and there is one best thing in it—supremely, overwhelmingly best—and that is affection. I’ve chased around after fame and work for others, but I just wish I had spent pretty much all my time loving you and Mother and Ned, and let everything else come way down on the list. The people who really love us are so few, aren’t they? Lots of them like us, lots of them are glad to be with us, but few can be counted on “world without end, Amen.”
… This is surely a very uncertain and unsatisfactory world for me right now. How much we all do like definiteness and how few are willing to trust the future to the Great Spirit. We fuss and fume as if it would do good rather than ill. Happiness is the thing we all desire and it is to be had easily through a most simple philosophy; do your best and then have faith that things will come right. Happy people are those who live with happy thoughts; those who see good in people and by brave and cheerful thinking are superior to depression and bitterness.
The longer I live the more I am convinced that it is our duty to be gay; not reckless, never that; not boisterous, but light-hearted. It saves doctor’s bills, brings success, and is the one method, the natural method, by which we become really big, and by that I mean superior to the evil forces that try to break us down. … To be gay one must see how very little some things are, and how very big other things are. And the big things are things like love and goodness and unselfishness; and the little things are the selfish mean things, self-indulgent things, things generally that come out of one’s vanity, one’s love of one’s self. Get rid of that and life becomes a pretty good place. Envy, vanity, self-indulgence—these are devils.
… I wish you would really sink yourself into some religion. To start right is so important. You will miss much joy in life, I am convinced, by not having a faith; something to live by, something that explains the questions that rise each hour. Buddhism does not claim to be supernatural, is not founded on miracles, and yet Buddha taught the philosophy of Christ five hundred years before He came. The central note is getting above self—real self-mastery. Possessing, mastering your body and mind so that you do not allow envy or hatred to possess you, and do not hanker after “things,” possessions, or fame or popularity, and keep strong hold on wilfulness and anger and your passions. Its fundamental maxim is that unhappiness and sorrow come from ignorance of Truth—and Truth is found by submerging self. The body is not bad, the lusts of the body and the mind are not bad, but the body is no more than an envelop for the soul, its master.
Good-night to you both, you are fast asleep by now. … In my long days and nights I think so much about you, wondering what the Gods have in store for her who has been so much to me. Much, much love little one.
Dad — To Benjamin Ide Wheeler
Rochester, Minnesota, January I, 19L1
To the Wheelers with the warmest greetings of the Lanes! A bonny year be this to you—a year of sunny faces—may you live surrounded by those whom you love and damned indifferent to all the rest!
I, Franklin K. Lane, am trying to find out if the last doctor in New York was right. He said my trouble came from an improper alliance between my gall-bladder and my pyloric orifice, and that here in Rochester they could be summarily divorced. (If you don’t know where the pylorus is you may locate it as the N. W. 1/4 of the N. W. 1/4 of the stomach. Until you reach fame you never have a pylorus—and then it is most costly.) So here I am in a real Reno, hoping that a knife will be able to “put me to work anew,” … and writing this as a proof of “love and affection,” whatever the legally great may mean by the distinction. …
And talking of language, have you read what Wells has to say in his Outline of History on this subject? I found it very interesting; probably all old stuff to you, however. Can there be a science of language, or of anything that a human creates? I am rather Bergsonian in my idea of the individual man—each is a species.
Miller is very unhappy because [Governor] Harding may leave the Board. He [Miller] will go if the new man is not satisfactory. But I think he will be. For Harding will be conservative and a great respecter of wealth. And Miller while a radical in many things is a classicist as to Finance.
If Harding leaves out Hoover he will do himself and the country harm, and Hoover good. At last the sun shines!
F. K. L.
To Lathrop Brown
Rochester, Minnesota, January 3, [1921]
Well, my dear young Spirit of the Renaissance, I am not yet dead, not even dying. Slowly I am doing the stations of the Cross in this most thorough institution. I am delighted with my experience. Here is concentrated every form of torture and annoyance to which one can be legally subjected. Cruel and unusual punishments are forbidden by the Constitution, but I take it that one may yet take torture and punishment, if he pays for it. All that I have ever done, been or thought has been revealed—probed for, and found out. …
Truly, this is the most scientifically organized organization of scientists that ever was. Henry Ford could not improve upon it. Combine him with M. Pasteur, add a touch of one Edison, and a dose of your friend, Charlie Schwab, and you have the Mayo Clinic, big, systematized, modernized, machinized, doctorial plant, run by a couple of master workmen. I am seeing it all, and am prepared for any fate. Thus far I am no more than twenty-one years of age. My organs seem to be working union hours and to react with proper promptitude, self-respect and authority. Tomorrow I am to be photographed and fluoroscoped—and then will come the verdict. If it is the guillotine I shall go gaily, like one of your ancestors in those tumbril days of France. What I fear is an order to “rest,” on a new diet. But I guess whatever is said will be the last word—the Supreme Court decision. Fine reputation, that, for two young chaps who never went to Harvard, eh, what?
Well, tell me the news. You have been silent too long. I long to know of your further adventures in politics with one G. White. …
And now, my dear Lathrop, may I extend to you the greetings of the New Year. May you have a continuous and abiding and keen sense that you are doing good, likewise doing well.
F. K. L.
To Mrs. George Ehle
Rochester, Minnesota, January, [1921]
It is only a little below freezing. The sky is grey. Snow, hard and frozen over, covers the ground, sleighs go through the streets, jingling their merry way. Boys throw each other down upon the encrusted snow. Girls in red woolen caps pick their way cautiously. Farm horses drawing sleds make their heavy way. And in these sleds, families sitting on the heaped straw in the bed of the wooden box, smiling mothers and happy babies, lined up together, warm, protected from the wind. Trees outlined against the sky, looking like dark coral rising out of a sea of snow into the dull light. An old man, gaunt, bewhiskered, trudges along confidently although he looks over eighty. A younger man, evidently a stranger, feels his cautious way over the slippery walk, covered with furs, hands, head, and body. After him a still younger man, without an overcoat—a postman.
Can you see it all? Do you recognize the picture? Was it once part of your life? This world is not so very bad when nature challenges every one to fight for life. Nothing doing for me now! That’s the word. Too much risk. …
Bless you, Lady Dear of the Understanding Eye. May we yet meet upon the gentle banks of the Shepaug and there make medicine for our poetic souls.
Anne has been a trump through these ten days of anxiety. Yours affectionately,
F. K. L.
To Mrs. William Phillips
Rochester, Minnesota, January 11, [1921]
The black cat, yellow-eyes, came, dear Lady Caroline—came to me here in a hospital and I put him on my table alongside my tiny bust of Lincoln, which is the sacred place. I wish indeed those eyes could see within this shell of mine and tell what it is that twists my heart, physically turns it on its axis, so that its polarity is changed. From mystery to mystery we have traveled the past year, Anne, with her unfaltering trust, and I, a doubting Thomas. We came here for an operation, but the doctors somewhat doubt its wisdom at all, certainly not now, when pneumonia might befall. So after ten hard days of closest examination I go forth from this, the Supreme Court of Surgery in the Land, with no decision. “Wait and see what good it has done to live without tonsils, and in the California sunshine until spring.” … But they live in the Land of Guess!
And so another baby has come to bless you and William! Truly you are a confident couple! Age would hesitate to bring into a world, so filled with shadow, an increasing number of our species. What a supreme act of faith the continuance of the race is. … Oh, the cunning of Nature—how empty the heart of man or woman who has not felt the clutch of a baby’s hand, or drunk deep of the heaven-made perfume of a baby’s breath. And the impulse that babies give to life, the challenge that they make to the father is always a noble one. It is not so as to women; less, as to ourselves. We are urged to courses that are petty, unworthy, selfish, debasing, supine, and brutal by our own natures or those of our mates. But for the child we act nobly, its call to us is always to our finer side, and so gradually we are lifted higher. Did any man in history ever do a cruel or wicked thing because of the appeal made to him by the smile of his child? He may have accredited his action to the prompting of love for his baby, but I believe it would be found that there was another motive, generally an overwhelming personal vanity; so great a lust for power, perhaps, that it would carry across the gulf of death.
I hardly believe that you need fear immediate expulsion from your new-found Eden. My expectation is that you will be treated with kindness by the new Administration, which will act most cautiously on all things. I shall know how to get a word, any word you wish, to the new President, I think, and my services as you know are at your order at any time. But if you are sent into the Limbo of private life you will be welcomed by a host who have preceded you and who will selfishly rejoice.
My gayest greetings to Sir William and, in cloudy Holland, may the sun shine in your hearts always.
Franklin K. Lane — To James H. Barry
San Francisco Star
Rochester, Minnesota, January 12, [1921]
DEAR JIM,—The Star has set—it goes the way of Nature—the circle must be completed. The only question one may ask is, “Was it useful?” I think it was, Jim, it held many to the true course, it was an honest guide in a bewildering world.
Do let us meet when I am West, and talk of Henry George and John Marble and Arthur McEwen, who have gone on, and left not their like. …
F. K. L.
To Michael A. Spellacy
Rochester, Minnesota, January 12, [1921]
MY DEAR MIKE,— … I shall await your re-coming with great interest. Truly you should write up what you see. Get good pictures and I will get it all in the National Geographic Magazine, and then we’ll see what the Cosmos Club will say! I am in earnest about this—keep a diary in which you write, in your own gay style, what you see, and you will soon have fame as well as fortune.
The news from Mexico is not very encouraging. Obregon is sick so much, and without policy, without dependable friends. Cardinal Gibbons came near dying, but, thank God, pulled through! A very wonderful man. I am very fond of him and he likes me I know, for I handled the Indians for seven years and had no trouble, because he and I had a flat understanding that I should take my church troubles, if any arose, to him.
The old Chief Justice called on us in Washington. He is seventy-five and almost totally blind. And the greatest Chief since John Marshall.
De Valera has landed and I expect things to be doing pretty soon. The British are greatly mystified as to how he got over and back. You see you are not the only adventurer on the face of the globe. We used to think that these were prosey, stoggy, flat-footed days, but there is any amount of adventure—from the fields of Flanders to the mountains of Colombia—even the Spanish main has had its rebirth.
Mrs. Lane wants me to thank you for your thought of her. As you know no one holds a deeper, surer place in her heart than you and Tim.
Well, old chap, I am sitting in bed—four in the morning—with a devilish sore throat and without anything to eat or much sleep for thirty-six hours, so if this screed is not one of great illumination or information you will know that it was only a message of cheer and good-will from one who is fond of you, but who warns you to be careful for all of our sakes. As always,
Franklin K. Lane — To William R. Wheeler
Rochester, Minnesota, January 13, [1921]
DEAR BILL,—Off to see you eventually, I trust, tomorrow. Had my tonsils out, won’t do anything else till Spring. Meantime I want to see no doctors. Having tried twenty, and come “out by that same door wherein I went.” An osteopath, yes. Faith cure—Indian Medicine men—anything else, but no doctors! I turn from Esculapius to Zoroaster, from medicine to the sun. I want to “lie down for an aeon or two.” (Alice knows where that comes from.) With much love to you both.
Frank — To V. C. Scott O’Connor
[Rochester, Minnesota], January 13, [1921]
MY DEAR SCOTT O’CONNOR,—It is a joy to get your letter and to know of your new book which I have not seen, for the very good reason that for five months I have been in hospitals. Angina pectoris they call it, but where it comes from they don’t say, they don’t know. Am off to California for a couple of months, then probably back to New York.
I have read Wells’ History, which seems to me the most remarkable thing of the historical essay kind ever hit off; and therein I discovered your friend Asoka, but I have been able to learn little else about him.
Buddhism attracts me greatly, as perhaps the most perfect attitude on the negative side that has ever been developed and largely lived. It is not complete for a temperate zone people, who are and must be aggressive. Nor does it reveal, so far as I know, the spiritual possibilities that Christianity does. The constructive seems to be lacking. But it is so far ahead of the purely opportunist attitude that Christianity takes that I should like to be a Buddhist, I verily believe.
I see that Lord Reading goes to India. He is the greatest of diplomats, an oriental by nature, and will do good, if good can be done in that unhappy situation. I admire the cheerful way Lloyd George keeps. He is a great man. Each six months I have looked to see him fall, but he keeps up, even with Ireland, India, Egypt, South Africa on his back.
Tell me what you are doing now, anything beside writing, and writing what next? I wish that I had the literary endowment— ideas, plus style, plus energy. Good fortune to you always. Cordially yours,
Franklin K. Lane — Letter Sent to Several Friends
Rochester, Minnesota, January 10, 1921
“And when they came upon the Snark, they found it was a Boojum—or words to that effect—and so, my dear Jack, they couldn’t operate now.
There is the whole story. Details there are, of course. But 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.KL.
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.