Posterity (5 page)

I must talk this over with you at length. I can't write it. I can't leave the ranch now. Ask mama, from me, if you can run up on the train to the ranch when here and have a few hours talk with me about your education.

If mama says “no,” & I hope for your sake that she will not, then, anyway, select your French & German & cut out Latin & Greek (as we previously planned), & wait until I can come down & talk with you.

Of course, remember, & tell mother so, that you are my first-born; that your life is largely at stake here; that I know; that teachers of English do not know; and that the greatest thing in the world right now for
you
would be to have this talk with me. It is not a case of mother; of me; but of
you & your whole life welfare.

You can come on a morning train and leave on an afternoon train; better would it be to stay one night over, because I work all morning.

Of course, have mama read this letter and talk the whole matter over with her.

Remember that your daddy is a very busy daddy these day.

Daddy.

P.S.—Always write your letters in
ink
, on
one side
only. Always address your letter in
ink
. Always know the postal laws.

First class postage is reckoned in
units of two cents
. 3cts is no good on a letter. 2–4–6–8—is the way to stamp letters. 3 cts. means that you lose 1 ct., and that the recipient must pay the difference between 2 cts. and 4 cts., or 2 cts.

Daddy

L
INCOLN
S
TEFFENS TO
P
ETE
S
TEFFENS

“Nobody understands things as they are and the proof of this is that nobody,—not the greatest scientist,
not the tenderest poet, not the most sensitive painter; only for a moment, the kindest lover can see
that all is beautiful.”

Journalist, radical, and reformer, Lincoln Steffens was among the first of America's muckrakers. In a series of articles for
McClure's
magazine, later published together in 1904 in his well-known book
The Shame of the Cities
, Steffens exposed to the nation the widespread corruption of local governments. His work changed the way Americans viewed the establishment and introduced a new kind of journalism to the country: investigative reporting.

A father only late in life, to Steffens's great surprise, he was delighted and fascinated by fatherhood and created a gentle, affectionate atmosphere for little Pete. “The father's place is in the home,” he wrote, “and there I am and there I mean to stay—on guard—to protect my child from education.”

Here, while in Germany working on his autobiography, sixty-year-old Steffens writes a letter of guidance for the future to his two-year-old son, Pete.

Carlsbad, June 23, 1926

Dear Pete:

This place will suit you I think. Down three flights of stairs is a restaurant through which you will go to either an open cafe in front or on a side toward the town to a large graveled playground. There is not much for a little fellow like you to do on this playground. It is the grown-up idea for a place for kids. A bare yard where there is nothing to break and nothing to get hurt on. Safety first is the law for children, but you will have your ball and we will find you a half-developed
Deutsches Madel
[German girl] to play with, so that you can learn to think in another language. Sometimes we can go in back of the house to a playground for grown-ups. That has a net and balls 'n' everything to amuse the big children who can't play with nothing like a baby. They have a game called tennis which they work at hard rather than do anything useful. It's thought to be degrading to work; and it is. It is a sure sign that your father was an honest man and never got any graft, if you have to work for your living. I hope to arrange it so that you will not be ashamed of me; I leave you my graft and I'll show you how to get more if you need it. If you work, you will work as a scientist or an artist, for fun, not for money. Money
cannot
be made by labor. But work, real work, for what we call duty or the truth, that is more fun than tennis. Sometimes we will sit, you and I, and look at the human beings that crawl around here, and when we have had our fill of that sight we will walk away a few hundred feet and look at the trees, the beautiful, tall straight trees that have no bellies and no bad tastes. They are dignified and well-dressed. I'd like to have you appreciate trees, appreciate the difference between them and men, and then, some day, believe that, under decent conditions it will be possible for human beings to also have souls. They haven't now; only bellies, pockets and the poor beginnings of a mind.

Your mother and your Cousin Jane will explain this to you, if I am gone. They will tell it to you honestly and humorously, Pete; they will not propagand with you; with all others maybe; but not with Pete. You are to have the straight of it my boy; and the straightest of the straight is that we don't know anything; not any of us; not Jane, not Peter, not I. Nobody understands things as they are and the proof of this is that nobody,—not the greatest scientist, not the tenderest poet, not the most sensitive painter; only for a moment, the kindest lover can see that all is beautiful. I can't, I only believe that.

It may be wrong; there may be ugliness, like the sick bellies these miserable
Kurgaste
[spa guests] come here to cure, but I have a funny old faith that, if a little fellow like you is shown everything and allowed to look at everything and not lied to by anybody or anything, he, even Pete, might do better even than Joyce did what
Ulysses
was meant to do; he might see and show that there is exquisite beauty everywhere except in an educated mind.

And an educated mind is nothing but the God-given mind of a child after his parents' and his grandparents' generation have got through molding it. We can't help teaching you; you will ask that of us; but we are prone to teach you what we know, and I am going, now and again, to warn you:

Remember we really don't know anything. Keep your baby eyes (which are the eyes of genius) on what we don't know. That is your playground, bare and graveled, safe and unbreakable.

Love your mother, but don't you believe and revere her; and as for your father, laugh at him as he laughs at himself till the tears start.

L. Steff.

E
UGENE
O'N
EILL TO
S
HANE
O'N
EILL

“Because any fool knows that to work hard at something you want to accomplish
is the only way to be happy.”

In July 1939, playwright Eugene O'Neill had just completed notes and outlines for two of his masterworks,
The Iceman Cometh
and
Long Day's Journey Into Night
. At fifty years of age he had already won the Nobel Prize and three Pulitzer Prizes (a fourth Pulitzer was awarded to him after his death).

O'Neill was the father of three children—Eugene, Jr., with his first wife, and Shane and Oona with his second wife. A shy, often depressed and extremely driven man, he was not particularly affectionate nor involved with any of his children. His second child, Shane, was a sweet but troubled boy who idolized his father. For O'Neill, Shane's lack of commitment and his dependence on others were persistent sources of frustration. Here O'Neill, who was living in California with his third wife, Carlotta, writes to nineteen-year-old Shane, who over the preceding several years had been asked to leave one school after another.

July 18, 1939

Dear Shane,

I wrote Oona a couple of days ago to tell you to expect an answer to your letter soon and here it is.

My feeling, that Harry spoke to you about—and by the way, I didn't tell him to say anything to you—was based on the fact that you had let me hear so little from you at Lawrenceville. But forget it. I appreciate a lot the frankness of this last letter of yours and I hope you will always write to me in just that spirit. What you say of your feeling a new understanding had sprung up between us on your last visit was exactly what I felt. Which made it doubly hard to comprehend why later on you went ahead with a complete change in your plans without consulting me and were all booked for Lawrenceville by the time I heard from you.

My advice on the subject of raising horses would not be much use to you. I don't know anyone in that game, what conditions or prospects are, or anything else about it. All I know is that if you want to get anywhere with it, or with anything else, you have got to adopt an entirely different attitude from the one you have had toward getting an education. In plain words, you've got to make up your mind to study whatever you undertake, and concentrate your mind on it, and really work at it. This isn't wisdom. Any damned fool in the world knows it's true, whether it's a question of raising horses or writing plays. You simply have to face the prospect of starting at the bottom and spending years learning how to do it. The trouble with you, I think, is you are still too dependent on others. You expect too much from outside you and demand too little of yourself. You hope everything will be made smooth and easy for you by someone else. Well, it's coming to the point where you are old enough, and have been around enough, to see that this will get you exactly nowhere. You will be what you make yourself and you have got to do that job absolutely alone and on your own, whether you're in school or holding down a job.

After all, parents' advice is no damned good. You know that as well as I. The best I can do is to try to encourage you to work hard at something you really want to do and have the ability to do. Because any fool knows that to work hard at something you want to accomplish is the only way to be happy. But beyond that it is entirely up to you. You've got to do for yourself all the seeking and finding concerned with what you want to do. Anyone but yourself is useless to you there.

I'm glad you got the job on the party-fishing boat. It's a start in the right direction of independence. The more you get to know of independence the better you will like it, and the more you will get to know yourself and the right aim for your life.

What I am trying to get firmly planted in your mind is this: In the really important decisions of life, others cannot help you. No matter how much they would like to. You must rely on yourself. That is the fate of each one of us. It can't be changed. It just is like that. And you are old enough to understand this now.

And that's all of that. It isn't much help in a practical advice way, but in another way it might be. At least, I hope so.

I'm glad to know of your doing so much reading and that you're becoming interested in Shakespeare. If you really like and understand his work, you will have something no one can ever take from you.

We are looking forward to Oona's visit. I appreciate your writing about her as you did. It is so long since I've seen her. Too long. Ordinarily I would have been coming East every year or two to put on new plays and would have seen her then. But a Cycle of nine plays is another matter. It brings up complications that keep me tied down to the job, especially as I have not yet caught up on my schedule from the delay my long illness of two years ago caused.

Don't talk of dry spell! We know all about that! We hardly had any rain last winter and now we live in dread our springs will get so low before summer ends that a lot of the stuff we have planted around the house can't be watered and will have to die. It's rotten. Natives tell us there was less rain this year than at any time for forty years.

Carlotta joins me in love to you. Let me know as soon as you have any definite plans for the immediate future. And keep your chin up! You will be all right as soon as you get yourself organized along one set line.

As ever,
Father.

N
.
C
.
W
YETH TO
N
AT
AND
C
AROLINE
W
YETH

“To keep alive and to intensify his sense of wonderment and his curiosity about the simplest things—these will become and remain the most potent factors in his life, no matter what he is destined to do.”

N. C. Wyeth's enthusiasm for the world around him was apparent in nearly all he did. The celebrated illustrator, whose classic paintings illuminated the pages of such books as
Treasure Island
and
Kidnapped,
loved adventure, nature, and action. He was known to stand for hours on the rocky coast of Maine just watching the crashing waves, sensing the power of the ocean. Wyeth delighted in his family and encouraged his five gifted children to stretch their imaginations and creativity to their fullest. Three of his children—Henriette, Caroline, and Andrew—became artists. His daughter Ann became a composer and painter, and son Nat, an engineer and inventor.

Here N. C. Wyeth writes to his eldest son, Nat, and Nat's wife, Caroline, about their nearly two-year-old son, Newell.

Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
October 19, 1943

Dear Nat and Caroline,

The memories of last week with you all are not dimmed as each event stands lens-clear. The beautiful and powerful little figure of Newell dominates it all however. His personality, for one so very young, is truly astonishing to me; the clarity of it remains in my memory, as does his blonde face and figure, cameolike—in sharp preciseness and ultimate delicacy. I like to think mostly of the glow of his hair and face in the cavernous gloom of that cathedrallike woods of “the grotto.” I shall never forget him there.

Obviously he is blessed with a quick and attentive spirit. Nourish these traits by every means you can think of. This will comprise his greatest and profoundest education, no matter what imposing institutions he may encounter later on. To keep alive and to intensify his sense of wonderment and his curiosity about the simplest things—these will become and remain the most potent factors in his life, no matter what he is destined to do.