The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political Part 48

This flag is a symbol. It stands for the finest thing in a human being--aspiration--the seed of the Divine. It represents the n.o.blest 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 G.o.d'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 cl.u.s.ter 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 const.i.tuents. 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed through this initial period of gaining status, and his future will be one of an a.s.sured 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. c.o.x is making a manly fight on behalf of the President's League, but the administration is sullen, is doing nothing. c.o.x 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 G.o.d, 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 circ.u.mstances--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 G.o.d 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 n.o.ble man was in great good fortune; and I envy him because the G.o.ds showed their love for him even up to the last. The wicked, torturing devils respected his gay spirit as he pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sured, 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 G.o.d 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]