The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
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]