Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children

by Dorie Mccullough Lawson

Richard E. Byrd Jr.

  On May 9, 1926, Commander Byrd and Chief Machinist's Mate Floyd Bennett flew for sixteen hours, 1,360 miles, from King's Bay, Spitzbergen, over the North Pole and back. He returned home to a hero's welcome and a ticker-tape parade in New York City. Byrd later went on to lead five expeditions to Antarctica and to make the first flight over the South Pole.

  SHERWOOD ANDERSON TO JOHN ANDERSON

  “In the end perhaps a man can only remain

  devoted to the intangible.”

  Sherwood Anderson, author of the classic Winesburg, Ohio, was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. In that his fiction was driven by the lives and psychology of ordinary people, rather than by plot, Anderson broke new ground for future generations of American novelists.

  He was happiest when he was in solitude writing, and found marriage, time and again, a disappointment. While married to his first wife, the mother of his three children, he became desperate to “escape out of marriage and into life,” and to begin writing. “Most women simply frighten me,” he wrote to a friend. “I feel hunger within them. It is as though they wished to feed upon me.”

  Here Sherwood Anderson, between his third and fourth marriages, writes to his twenty-year-old son, an art student at the University of Wisconsin.

  [1929]

  Dear John—

  the very capacity you have for feeling will inevitable make it burst into a flame occasionally about some woman. My own experience will, I am afraid, be of little help. In the end art is the essential thing, I think.

  It is so difficult. The road is so long. Sometimes it is a tremendous easement to center it on some other person.

  Women want that, of course. I do not believe that, at bottom, they have the least interest in art. What their lover gives to work, they cannot get.

  In the end you may prove a great disappointment to women, as I have and as most artists have.

  Suddenly you go off. What was all-absorbing is no longer so. It is more terrible for the woman than going to another woman.

  You go into something indefinite, into a place where they cannot follow.

  I dare say you will have to go through these cycles. Who has escaped them. Read the history of all men who had devotion. In the end perhaps a man can only remain devoted to the intangible. Nature serves the purpose and woman is sometimes an exquisite manifestation of nature. I would not want you to miss that, but can understand it's confusion.

  I dare say sometimes you will be disgusted at yourself as I have been when you find yourself turning even this fine feeling into work.

  You did not give me an address at Madison.

  S. A.

  EUGENE O'NEILL TO EUGENE O'NEILL, JR.

  “Keep your love affairs free from all relatives and

  their homes if you want to avoid complications with

  your love or with your relatives or both.”

  Of familial entanglements with affairs of the heart, Eugene O'Neill was quite familiar. As a young man of twenty-two he secretly married Kathleen Jenkins when she disovered she was pregnant. Both Kathleen's and Eugene's own parents were upset when they learned of the pregnancy and marriage, and their behavior and influence combined to keep the young couple apart even after the birth of Eugene O'Neill, Jr. Having never lived with Kathleen and having seen his son only once or twice, Eugene was officially divorced from Kathleen when the boy was two years old. It would be nearly a decade before he saw his son again in 1921.

  In the years following their reunion, O'Neill and Eugene, Jr., corresponded frequently and a genuine kind of camaraderie developed between them.

  In 1930, a newlywed for the third time, O'Neill was living a secluded existence in France and was at work on his play Mourning Becomes Electra. He was somewhat distracted by what turned out to be an unjustified plagiarism suit, and he was concerned about keeping up financially with his new wife's way of life. Here he responds to nineteen-year-old Eugene, Jr., who had asked to bring a girlfriend to visit his father and stepmother in France.

  Feb. 20th 1930

  Dear Eugene:

  I have been waiting to answer your last letter to Carlotta that was meant for both of us until I had finished the first draft of the huge job. Well, I finished it today. Thank God! It has been a terrific job and I have never worked so hard on anything before. But I am pleased with the results. Of course, there is the devil of a lot yet to do before the final result is reached—as much again and then some. When I will have the final version ready, quien sabe? Certainly not in time for any production next season. I am now going to Italy for a rest. I need it. I am all “washed up” and on edge and need a change of scene to get my mind off the obsession of this job that I have been living with night and day for the past four months.

  Now as to your coming over: I am sorry to say that it doesn't look as if it would be possible this year. In the first place, the way things are stacking up, I simply cannot afford to stake you to the trip. There will be no play next year, Interlude will be finished, and I doubt if I will have more than enough income in the season of '30–'31 to pay alimony. And my expenses this past year, what with the divorce—a costly affair—and other stuff have been abnormally large. The pity is they promise to be even larger this coming twelve months. The damned plagiarism suit is due to cost me a pile of money. And so forth. You know that I will always give you a break and that I am not talking through my hat about this but have reason. But even laying aside the matter of expense, there are other matters. For one thing, there is a prospect that I may have to go to New York this summer about the suit. Then there is the eminent probability that Carlotta's mother and daughter will come for a visit—or if they don't that she will have to go to California to see them, in which case I will come to New York with her. You will understand that this family business has to be arranged in a sort of schedule with certain periods assigned to each party. You were over last year and it is her turn to shoot now. This doesn't imply that Carlotta wouldn't welcome you with shouts of joy no matter who was here—but the point is that we can't have too much of a crowd here at once. Carlotta couldn't stand the strain of the elaborate housekeeping entailed and if I was trying to work, which I will be, it would bawl me all up. So you see. That's the answer. So I think you will agree that it is only fair that you should stay where you are this summer. If there is anything special you figure out you want to do in the States in the summer, let me know and I will help you to the best of my ability. Another thing I feel strongly is this: You owe your mother a hell of a lot more than you do me in the way of giving you the background to become what you are, and I think you ought to take a good look inside yourself and figure out whether you don't owe her a bit more of your time, and whether you shouldn't see a lot of her during her vacation. You are an only child, you know, and that makes it a bit tough for her. I don't mean to do any lecturing but the above is worth a thought.

  As for the other matter you brought up—that of bringing Betty here—even if you had come over I wouldn't have advised that. What I am writing now is strictly between you and me, sabe? It is the fruit of whatever worldly sagacity various kicks in the pants, my own pants and others, have given me. Keep your love affairs free from all relatives and their homes if you want to avoid complications with your love or with your relatives or both. Why run the risk with your love of forcing it into human interrelationships where you never can foretell what the answer may be? For example, how do you know Betty would like me or Carlotta, or that we would like her? You may say that you know but that [is] only because you feel affection for all concerned. And if one dislike crept into this combination, then all the slumbering prejudices would awake and the complications would start—and spread! Ideally this sounds rather crass but practically all it amounts to is that everyone is human and more or less petty in small things no matter how nobly they may respond to soul-trying crises. My dope is emphatically that love should be kept on a pedestal and not made to run unnecessary risks, for it is very fr
agile and has a hard struggle to endure even with all the breaks one can give it. Family contact I rate as risk A One. Please understand me right. I respect your love for Betty and she sounds like a brick to me and I would sure like to meet her if I come to New York. Also understand that Carlotta has nothing to do with what I am writing and doesn't even know I am writing this. It is honestly for the sake of your preserving the glamour of your love that I am writing. It is for Betty's sake most of all. You shouldn't want her to be put in such a position, that's my notion. It might work out all right, but then again it mightn't and my whole idea is the practical one that when you are happy as it is why run any risks? If you were married it would be different—only because it would have to be different. But even in the case of marriage you have only to go back to your Mother and me. If families had been kept out of it we might have had a chance. I must confess, with the guy I was then, the chance was slim and she was probably well rid of me—but you never can tell how much family interference and prejudices had to do with it.

  Well, that's off my chest. What I have written is far from clearly stated but I rely on you to get the gist of it and give me credit for good intentions even if you think I am all wrong in this particular case. One of the principal reasons for my caution, as I hope you will guess, is that your and my relationship is too fine for us to place it in a position where, through neither your fault or mine, it might be hurt or messed with. Put that one in your pipe and smoke it!

  Well, there's no news except work. I have been writing every day for four months half the day and thinking about it the other half so there wasn't much chance for anything to happen.

  Good luck and all love to you! Write me and let me know how everything is coming at Yale. I expect to be back here on the job in three weeks, or at most four. I hope this vacation will buck me up. I'm fagged out.

  As ever,

  Father

  N. C. WYETH TO ANN WYETH MCCOY

  AND JOHN MCCOY

  “To sustain the integrities which you are both generously endowed with, to keep alive that sense of charity toward one another, to be sensitive with a purpose, and with vast energy and deep-laid ambitions, you two will go far—and by this I mean you will go far into the realms of human happiness.”

  That marriage might take one away from art and work was always a concern for N. C. Wyeth. The great American illustrator worried about his painting when he himself married and he was equally apprehensive about the effects of matrimony on his creative and productive children.

  By the time of her wedding at twenty years old, Ann Wyeth was already an accomplished composer whose piece A Christmas Fantasy had been performed by Leopold Stokowski of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Her new husband, John McCoy, was a painter and a student of N. C. Wyeth.

  Nine days after they were married in his studio in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, N. C. Wyeth wrote to Ann and John McCoy.

  Studio

  Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania

  November 4, 1935. Monday

  Dear Ann and John,

  Your splendid letters came in this morning!

  The time, since you left, has been strangely vacant and strangely full to repletion. We all go around with a hollow feeling and yet our thoughts, and actions too, fairly teem! We seem to be vaguely seeking to pick up the loose strands and in some way to seek a new combination that we may tie them together again to start anew. At the same time our lives are actually very full and each one is accomplishing something.

  The canvas I thought sure was a failure has turned into one of my good ones. Andy has done his strongest landscape as well as several superb life drawings. Carolyn has come out of the dark woods with a powerful still-life and her bust. Henriette painted a corking portrait of John Wyeth and on the side captured first prize in the Wilmington show with her “Miss Flaherty” (and Andy sold his “Seiners” to Mrs. Meeds). And Ma has been turbulently busy in the home and making many dashing visits to your homestead beyond the brook.

  Back of it all are the resurgent echoes of the wedding, memories of which will never fade. It is all a massive dream to me, real and unreal as all dreams are.

  As John truthfully said, the procession of events on that evening of the 26th left a deep mark on most of the friends who were here. There was a poignancy about it all which I believe transcended the vast majority of similar occasions. The surroundings were indeed happy and felicitous, but the important ingredient was the great sympathy and the great faith in you two—in you, as individuals, and together as builders of a new generation. To sustain the integrities which you are both generously endowed with, to keep alive that sense of charity toward one another, to be sensitive with a purpose, and with vast energy and deep-laid ambitions, you two will go far—and by this I mean you will go far into the realms of human happiness. All else, by comparison, is nothing.

  I am sorry, of course, that the fog has persisted. Perhaps Nature herself has conspired to give you privacy on your honeymoon!

  But if I know you two, even persistent fog will not be lost and it will always take on a certain hallowed beauty and character which never existed before.

  Our weather here has been dark, wet, lowering and commonly called lousy. But no! It has been like a great gray curtain dropped after a magnificent “third act.” It has given us a remoteness—a chance to get our emotional breath. It has been gorgeous!

  [N. C. Wyeth]

  CLARE BOOTHE LUCE TO ANN BROKAW

  “If you don't love him that's your business—if you do

  it becomes partly mine, darling.”

  Sharp-tongued and hard-driven, Clare Boothe Luce succeeded in the professional world of men in a way no woman ever had. Blonde and athletic, she was striking in appearance and when in the company of men, she made sure her good looks, ambition, and bold mind were not overlooked. She was the managing editor of Vanity Fair, an original and popular playwright, congresswoman, the first woman ever to deliver the keynote address at a national political convention (Republican National Convention, 1944), and she was the American Ambassador to Rome. Her husband was Henry Luce, the creator of TimeLife, Inc., and one of the most influential publishers of all time.

  She had one child, a daughter, Ann, with her first husband, a wealthy playboy named George Brokaw. The girl was attractive and smart and so admired her mother that she once wrote in her diary. “Was that glorious woman really my mother?”

  Here Clare Boothe Luce writes a conversational letter of advice to eighteen-year-old Ann, a sophomore at Stanford University. Two days before receiving her mother's endorsement, Ann had told her boyfriend, Walton Wickett, that she didn't want to see him again. The following letter from her mother “threw [her] into a tailspin . . .”

  November 24, 1942.

  Ann darling:

  Thank you so much for your lovely flowers, my sweet, for the beautiful red picture frame, for the McArthur bowl, and above all for your telegram on our anniversary.

  We had the loveliest party in one of the big suites upstairs in the Waldorf. I am enclosing a list of the guests. Everybody made wonderful speeches about how nice Dad and I were, cracked a lot of jokes and toasted us in champagne. And then afterwards we all went to Noel Coward's movie, “In which we serve” which was very fine indeed. And then we came home and yammered some more and went to bed. We missed you as we always do!

  Now I would like to tell you for your own information, and not for his, about your young friend Walter. As you know, I told you when you first began to speak of him that in spite of all the hard things you said of him, he somehow or other “came through” as a very nice guy indeed. He sounded pretty nice to me although I thought at the time, and still do, that he is a little on the old side for you. However, you made the thing sound so unexpectedly serious when I spoke to you on Sunday that I reacted rather spontaneously as a loving Mama might be expected to do and made certain inquiries through the heads of Panam on the subject of your young man. I am glad to report that the Panam tycoons and bigwigs gave him a remar
kably fine bill of endorsement. They said he was not only a young man of complete sobriety and dependability but that he had plenty of brains and marked ability. They said also that he had a great future in the airways—which as you know is one of the businesses with the greatest future of all in the postwar world. They said, in short, that he was a swell guy, that his family was as nice as it could be—all of which is very reassuring to me. My instincts at the time when you told me about him were that he was a very nice beau for you to have, and it seems to me very nice that you should have one. If you don't love him that's your business—if you do it becomes partly mine, darling. If the young man is really serious about you and you think there is a chance you might get serious about him, I wish that you would urge him to come East shortly and let Dad and me look him over and see if we really think as highly of him as his business associates seem to. I think you had better bring a couple of snapshots of him when you come home, because I would like to see what kind of a creature I am discussing with you. Well, that's all there is to that. I am, as I say, very much more comfortable in my mind about it than when I talked to you on the telephone because he sounds so nice and so clever.

  I am looking forward so eagerly to seeing you on the 20th. We will be here in the Waldorf until a day or so after Christmas and then instead of going down to Mepkin, we will go down to Washington and you will have a chance to look that over and see what you think of it.

  Don't worry about your studies. When you want to do them well you will do them superbly but for the moment the main thing is to get what little happiness there is out of life in this wartorn world because “these are the good old days” now.

  With bestest love to you,

  [Clare Boothe Luce]

  “. . . any time you want to make an ogre out of mama,

  in order to get rid of some wretched youth,

  I am only too happy!!”