Part 31
As if this were not enough to hinder, the desk must be cleared for exit--the office desk; for the place that knew me through seven long years of trouble, anxiety, insult, joy, humiliation, satisfaction, achievement, companionship, hope, shall soon know me no more, forever.
Verily, I say unto you, that if ever mortal man or mortal mind needed rest, recreation, recuperation, and other alliterative things, that same man is now writing to the Lady Elizabeth Ellis, of Terraced Garden, in Camden, by the Wateree. And he is writing without hope that he will see the Lady and her Lord and the Princeling, for moons and moons. This is a sad, sad word for him to write. But the whole world is skew-jee, awry, distorted and altogether perverse. The President is broken in body, and obstinate in spirit. Clemenceau is beaten for an office he did not want. Einstein has declared the law of gravitation outgrown and decadent. Drink, consoling friend of a Perturbed World, is shut off; and all goes merry as a dance in hell!
Oh God, I pray, give me peace and a quiet chop. I do not ask for power, nor for fame, nor yet for wealth. Lift me on the magic carpet of the Infinite Wish and lay me down on a grassy slope, looking out on a quiet sunny sea, and make me to dream that men are gentle and women reasonable. And forgive us our trespasses, Amen!
And again I pray--Give me patience. Let me not ask for today what may not come until tomorrow. Let mine eyes not be filled with visions of things as they would be in a world wherein men were Gods. Let mine ears be closed to Siren calls which lure to the rocks. Stiffen my soul to make the climb. Keep from my heart cynical despair. Make my mouth to speak slow words, and curb my tongue that it may not outrun the Wisdom taught by the years. Give surety to my steps, O Lord, and lead me by the hand for I know not the way.
Your telegram lures as your letter did. But such pleasures are not for us, because of our sins. "And those that are GOOD shall be happy!"
Work. Work. Work. It is the order of the One Supreme. It keeps us from being foolish, and doing as fools do. It is needed for the mastery of a world that has its Destiny written, as surely as we have ours. It is a chain and a pair of wings; it binds and it releases. It is the master of the creature and the tool of the Creator. It is hell, and it lifts us out of hell into heaven. It was not known in Paradise, but there could be no Paradise without it. A curse and a Savior! Our life-term sentence and the one plan of salvation! Work for the weary, the wasted, and the worn. Work-- for the joyous, the hopeful, the serene. Work--for the benevolent and the malevolent, the just and the cruel, the thoughtful and the unheeding. Work--for things that life needs, for things that are illusions, for dead-sea fruit, for ashes; and work for a look at the stars, for the sense of things made happier for many men, for the lifting of loads from tired backs, for the smile of a tender girl, for the soft touch of a grateful mother, for the promise it brings to the boy of one's hopes.
Work! Why work? It is the order of the One Supreme.
So saying, at one o'clock of Sunday morning, he lifted up his hand and waved three times to the Southward--once for the Lady of the Troubled Heart, who flirts with the Angel of Destruction, thinking he may turn out to be a God, and once for the Lord of the Lady, serenely fatalistic, and the third, and this a very big one, for the Princeling who is making a manly battle, cheerfully, confidently. The Friend of the Three.
F. K L.
Washington, [February 5, 1920]
And so, again the Boy has been attacked by a strange enemy, and you are fighting. That is what you have been doing for years, fighting for that bit of life you love more than your own self. You did not think you could do it when you were a girl, did you? You have wondered at yourself many, many times. And wondered at the Fate which brought this long challenge to you. But it has been a splendid fight, hasn't it? A glorious fight against odds. There has been no justice in it. No justice, and our souls do so want justice, an even chance, something in front of us that we can see and know and fight. God knows why such tortures come to some, while others sail on such smooth seas. Can it be that there is no soul excepting the one we make for ourselves by fighting? Are those really blest who have such challenges given to their spirits? Or is this all by way of excusing God, or Nature, for the unexplainable?
There is no way to make the fight excepting to believe that the fight is the thing--the one, only, greatest thing. (To deny this is to leave all in a welter, and drift into purposeless cynicism, --blackness.) To determine that this is the way, the truth, and the life, is to get serenity. Then the winds may howl and the seas roll, but there can be no wreck.
I know you don't like to be coddled. You are not of the cotton- batting school. You can take and give. But "may I not" say a word of appreciation and perhaps of stimulation--give you a good masculine thump on the shoulder by way of saying that for one who lives in a mist you have lots of gimp. To love something better than oneself is the first step, I guess, toward making that soul.
Please read the note, in special envelop, to Ralphie, when he will be interested. By Jove, how fortunate that we could not leave. All my force is sick. Three of my assistants are laid up. Six hundred and eighty people in my Department are in bed. And I am struggling to get out and leave my job up to date. Good fortune!
F. K. L.
[Katonah, August, 1920]
... You know that I love you--yes, just as much as Ralph Ellis, who is a tough sailor man, and Anne Lane, who is a citizen of two worlds, will let me. But I would love you more, much more, if you did not have to be induced by my wife to write to me. Your love letter was all right, but it was procured. Do you get that word-- procured--and my wife was the procuress. This may be de rigueur and comme il faut and umslopogass on Long Island, but it does not go in Katonah--peaceful, pure Katonah!
Here, in this sweet centre, if a lady wishes "for to make eyes" at a man, by way of a letter, she does it without being told to do it by the said man's wife. And then to open, "Dear Mr. Lane,"--Gosh Lizzie! isn't that pretty warm!
My anger is so great that I am now sitting up in bed at the weary hour of two to relieve myself--for otherwise I cannot sleep.
Your remarks upon the distraught condition of the public mind, the unfortunate fix into which the Polacks have fixed themselves, the heart-breaking cry that you send out for men to get together and be sensible, before they are sadder,--these things have no lodgement in my soul-center. For I am loved by a lady who speaks much of free speech and courage and candor and other virtues of prehistoric existence, but who talks of herself all through her letter and never of me at all. How can the fire be kept burning with a cold back-log like that? Talk about me! That's the first principle of all conversation--even not amorous. Well, you are a good woman, Mrs. Ellis, and I hope Mr. Ellis is well, and that you are not having trouble with the help. Goodbye, Mrs. Ellis!
Come, sweet Elizabeth, let us join hands and go for a gay climb over the piney hills--you can sing your minor note of sad distress--your miserere, if you can, in the face of the puffy clouds, and I will laugh at you for having too much of world concern in your heart. The blessings do not come to those who are "troubled about many things." The soul is an individual, you know. We are saved by units not en masse. Every individual is a species --isn't that what splendid Bergson says? So come away from responsibilities and let your poor heart, which is so unselfish that it cannot rest, indulge itself in the luxury of a peaceful forgetting, for a few days.
Practically, this seems like a good place--the process is to reduce you to a pulp and then gradually restore you to form. I am just emerging from the mash.
Do give my greetings--graduated calorically as your judgment suggests--to the many friends in your neighborhood who have forgotten me.
Devotedly, yet very sore,
F. K. L.
[September]
This is a sentimental letter from a sentimentalist to a sent--, for a sent--. It is by way of atonement, chiefly. I want to be forgiven for all the hard things I have said to you. I feel that I owe you much, at least a good word, for all the bad ones I have given you.
You are a health-giver. That's not such a bad name, is it? In fact I don't know a better. It doesn't sound sentimental, no husband would be alarmed by it, and yet it carries in it implications of gaiety and tenderness and rompishness with a touch of mysterious adoration. Altogether it is a very real large word that does not signify virtues but rather attractivenesses. Mind, I don't say that you have not the virtues--all of them, offensive and defensive, but the attractivenesses make life, don't they? And to be a health-giver is not merely to have charm. That is the spell- casting power, to be filled with witchery, to be a witch. Yes, I believe it is something like that--very much in fact, but the witchery must be balsamic, it must be radiant, it must go out in rays or circles or waves, because it can't help going out, not purposefully and selfishly, like the casting of a net--it must be balsamic and radiant, the outbreathing of pines.
Now this is a very nice name I have called you--you can put it into Latin or Greek or French and make it sound much better to the unimaginative. But you deserve it, and I hope my little girl will become one.
FRANKLIN K. LANE
Katonah, Sunday, [September 25, 1920]
... We leave here on Wednesday (D. V.) for Bethel because you said to. Now how soon will you follow--a day--a week? Not more!
You made up your mind that you would go there, and there is now to be proof given whether your mind is weak or riding strong.
Anne is to have H. Beale there, and they move in circles barred to me. So I shall sorely need someone who knows my language. And I am not frivolous when I say that you and I need nothing more than a religious faith of some kind. Mohammedan, Christian Science, or what you will. We are both religious--deeply. We pray--we do things for the good of men and women,--but we do not relate ourselves properly to the Great Enveloping, Permeating Spirit. I have sought to, vainly, for many years, and yet I have not been persistent. "Seek and ye shall find!" I want to believe that the God of Things as They Are is not wilfully cruel. Is He indifferent?
Are we mastering something? Tell me! Do you know? What philosophy have you come to?
Well, all this we can talk over when we reach Bethel. Say, do you ever answer letters or is it your Queenly prerogative to drop your sweethearts down the public oubliette?
F. K. L.
Washington, 27 [December, 1920]
My wife won't let me call on you, "not now, anyhow," she says. Oh, you have so many enemies! Adolph and Mary, Senator and Mrs. Kellogg, Chief Justice and Mrs. White, Dr. and Mrs. Gehring. All are against you, and against me--all plotting, planning, and conspiring with my wife to keep us apart. They know the hold you have on me, that I had rather have you as my doctor than any one else in the whole vasty Universe--but why sigh? I am to be torn away on Wednesday and rushed to Rochester, where the Mayos will take me in hand, and do their worst. I have great hope that they may cut me into happiness, and carve me into health, and slice me into strength.
So, as Anne wired, we shall not see you in Camden, nor Ralph nor the Junior nor anything that is Ellis--not for some moons anyway.
... The reason for going to Mayos? To see if it is true that my stomach and my gall bladder have become too intimate. Rochester is the Reno where such divorces are granted.
I'd like to say I love you and the whole kit and caboodle, but my wife won't let me.
F. K. L.
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!