December 4, 1942.
Ann darling—
Your young man sent me a sad little note, the purport of which was that I was not only threatening to wreck his chances of persuading you on the subject of matrimony, but I was spoiling your college career by urging you to come to Washington. Now, I have written him a little note which I am enclosing. I don't know what you have told him. It is conceivable to your old ma that you are using me as an excuse to spare his feelings, and 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!!
So, o o o o, I leave it entirely up to you whether or not you want to send him this letter after you have read it. He will probably think I am even more of an old meany for not answering him at all, so you had better let me know if you don't want to send this one, and tell me what you would like me to say to help you out in the best way possible.
Always (you wretched little flirt),
Your adoring,
P.S. If you want this letter sent, drop it in the box yourself.
Ann sent Clare Boothe Luce's letter to Walton Wickett. (It has since disappeared.) Wickett felt it was a “kind and eminently sensible letter,” and he and Ann eventually went their separate ways.
JOHN STEINBECK TO THOM STEINBECK
“Glory in it . . .”
“I like to write. I like it better than anything.” From the time he was a teenager in California, John Steinbeck wrote, and wrote all the time. He produced a wide breadth of material, ranging from Of Mice and Men, to The Sea of Cortez, to Travels with Charley—some twenty-six volumes of fiction and nonfiction in all. For The Grapes of Wrath, he won the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1962, for his entire body of work he was awarded the Nobel Prize. At the time of his death in 1968, Steinbeck was the most popular novelist in the world. A shy man, awkward, and built large, he wanted people to care about his words but often resented their interest in him. He was married three times and the father of two sons.
He once wrote, “We are lonesome animals. We spend all our lives trying to be less lonesome.” In the following letter to his eldest son, fourteen-year-old Thom, who was away in Connecticut at boarding school, Steinbeck identifies two kinds of love, both of which he himself had experienced firsthand: the “crippling kind” with Gwyn Conger, the boys' mother, whom he had grown to despise; and the “outpouring of everything good in you,” which he felt he had found with his third wife, Elaine.
[New York]
November 10, 1958
Dear Thom:
We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.
First—if you are in love—that's a good thing—that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.
Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness, and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.
You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn't puppy love.
But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.
Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.
The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.
If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.
Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.
It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.
Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.
We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.
And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
Love,
Fa
Eugene O'Neill and Eugene O'Neill, Jr.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
John D. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
Good Work
JOHN ADAMS TO JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
“Go and see with how little Wisdom
this World is governed.”
“All my hopes are in him, both for myself and my country,” Vice President John Adams wrote of his eldest son in 1794. Of admirable character and extraordinary intellect, John Quincy Adams was a Boston lawyer and one of the most prolific political writers of the day. At just twenty-seven years old, he was widely read and traveled; he had been educated in Paris, Amsterdam, Leyden, and Harvard; he was fluent in seven languages; and he had served with the American minister to Russia. That John Quincy Adams was prepared for his first political appointment—Minister to Holland—his father was certain.
Here John Adams, the vice president of the United States under President George Washington, writes a confidential letter to his son.
Philadelphia May 26. 1794
My dear Son
The Secretary of State called upon me this morning to inform me by order of the President, that it is determined to nominate you to go to Holland as Resident Minister. The President desired to know if I thought you would accept. I answered that I had no Authority from you. But it was my Opinion that you would and that it would be my Advice to you, that you should.
The Salary is 4500 Dollars a Year and as much for an Outfit.
Your knowledge of Dutch and French; Your Education in that Country; your Acquaintance with my old Friends there will give you Advantages, beyond many others. It will require all your Freedom and all your other Virtues as well as all your Talents.
It will be expected that you come here to see the President and Secretary of State, before you embark. I shall write you as soon as the Nomination is made and advised by Senate. Be Secret. Dont open your Mouth to any human Being on the Subject except your Mother. Go and see with how little Wisdom this World is governed.
Adieu,
John Adams
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON TO
VICTOR AUDUBON
“. . . every exertion in our power should be kept up, with truth, firmness, dignity and consistency
from begainning to end.”
John James Audubon was the illegitimate son of a French slave-dealing sea captain. By the time he was thirty-four, he had been jailed for unpaid debts. In 1819, after he admitted bankruptcy and was released from jail, he redirected his efforts away from business and began painting portraits and teaching. During the following year, 1820, he concluded that his ambition was to publish a series of paintings of all of the birds of North America. From that point forward, with passion and single-mindedness, he pursued his dream. “My Birds, My Beloved Birds of America fill all my time and nearly all my thoughts,” he wrote.
Searching for specimens, he spent weeks and months in the woods, at times sleeping on the snow wrapped in a buffalo robe and eating everything from red-winged blackbirds to roasted wasps. When his two sons were young, Audubon's work kept him from them and his wife for years at a time and when the boys grew older he brought them in on the project. John, the younger son, often traveled with his father and served as his assistant. The elder, Victor, helped with editing and with the business of publishing. Audubon felt that Victor had “become [his] Right Arm and hand.” In writing to his
sons, he referred not to “my work,” but to “our work.”
Here America's most celebrated naturalist-artist writes to Victor, twenty-six years old, who was in England supervising the engraving, tinting, and printing of his father's plates and soliciting subscriptions for the work.
Charleston S.C. Jan'y 14th, 1834
My Dear Beloved Victor.—
God willing we will be with you about the 4th of July next!—
I have been much tormented for some weeks passed on account of the requisitions which you have made that I should return to England as early in the Spring as possible—no reasons have you given and sorry indeed will I be, if on our arrival in England I find, as I have done on a former occasion, that I should have been recalled to Europe for the mere gratification of a few Friends & acquaintances; the whole of whom I dare say may long to see me, but none of whom, can know the Intentions, the Cares, and the Anxieties which Your Father feels toward Your welfare, that of your Brother and equally that of your most kind Mother—The Die is however cast.—I have given up my urgent wishes to revisit the Floridas, and a certain portion of the Western & Northwestern portion of our own beloved Country—and unless you write in answer to my last letters to you on this subject, with open thoughts of your own that I may remain in America, depend upon what I say at the begaining of this—God willing I and us will be (God willing) with you on the 4th of July next.—
Fearing that you are troubled for the want of money, I will exert myself to the very utmost to send you forthwith 2. or 3. or 4 hundred pounds to alleviate the difficulties (if any there are) in your calls for cash.—I have already written to Docr Parkman to exert himself in trying to have some advances made on a/c of the 2d Volume at Boston & have requested to forward you if successful whatever he may get immediately. I shall in a few days go to Savannah to try with Wam Gaston to do the same there.—I wish you had made it a point to have sent me the 20 Volumes for which I have so often written to you.—through these I could have sent you perhaps one thousand pounds—but now this is all over and I must do the best I can without any of them but 2 Copies—
I can do no more in England than you have done—depend upon it the Southern part of that Country will be of no effect when I go there.—America I am sure is the Country that will support us after all.—
This day the Nos 34 & 35 for this City and for Columbia College have arrived in Port—but I have not seen them yet.—All the Nos by the President were Wet & good for nothing—These have been sold at auction in New York and have I been vexed enough on that account.
I ask of you most earnestly not to ship any thing more in this slack manner—If Havell will not see that our Work is properly packed, see to it yourself.—
I shall reach England I hope with as many Drawings of Water Birds as will compleat the 3d Volume of our Work—but to tell you the truth it will prove a most wonderful thing if the 4th Volume does contain 100 plates. You are afraid of New Species coming in—I am greatly afraid of the want of them—but enough of this—when we meet all will be understood in a few weeks, and in a few months I must return to Our Country to compleat my researches, and procure here (America) subscribers to enable us all to become one day independent of the World & particularly of England!
Long ere this reaches you I hope you will have received the Duplicate paper sent you for Louden's Magazine, and that also Mr Louden will have inserted it in his Journal—that, that paper may produce some effect on the mind of many, I have no doubt, but that it will be an equivalent to the representations of my character being false is quite another affair. —here Rattlesnakes are known to climb trees—to feed on Squirrels—&c—here Vultures are known to have no sense of Smell &c but all that we know of these matters will require a Century of Time to establish these facts in the Eyes of the British Public.—
Our Work will become important even long ere it is compleated; for this reason it is imperiously necessary that every exertion in our power should be kept up, with truth, firmness, dignity and consistency from begainning to end—that the World and Naturalists especially will become satisfied that when finished, Our Work will be the standard of American Ornothology, I have no doubt, but as this will in all probability only appear after my Death, you & your Brother are the ones that will reap the benefits of the Worthiness of my practical Studies, therefor I strongly advise you to believe in Your Father's thoughts, that through this Publication You & John may expect to become rich, respected and highly thought of—
Twenty Years since, my writing in the present style would have been ridiculous in me—but now, I am sure of what I say, and proud that when that I express my feelings freely to my Sons, I am equally sure that I tell them the truth & nothing but the truth; connected with my most ardent wish that they should become most happy, through my exertions connected with theirs—I will finish this as soon as possible after I have seen and delivered the Nos 34 & 35 for this place and the first Volume for Mr. Rees which is also arrived here—Good night
My Dear Victor—
16th—This morning I brought Nos 34 & 35 for the subscribers here, & the Columbia College—I have opened them, and I tell you with pleasure that I think them very fine. all I regret is the errors in nomenclature, which however may be corrected so that you may have them correct for those persons who have not yet been supplied.—as follows.—plate [—] instead of Grey Tyrant have Titirit Fly Catcher—Muscicapa Matinatus—Plate [—] Muscicapa Cooperii—also have the black headed Titmouse as follows (for it is a new Species) The Lesser black headed Titmouse—Parus Caroliniensis. My letter press will do the rest. —I will write to Havell.—
On the 18th Instant I ship to New York 5 Numbers of Water Birds to be forwarded to London by London Packet (I hope that the 1st of Feb.y.—When you receive them, write by duplicate from London & way of Liverpool that you have them, to relieve my anxiety about them. Inclosed is a list of them and of 3 more numbers composed of Drawings which you have in England, and which should you not receive the present 5 Numbers; have published rather than to stop the Work from going on regularly—but I hope the 5 Numbers will reach you safely.—
One of the 2 Volumes you sent is also received here and I have sent John to deliver it to Mr Rees' agent who I expect will pay John.—In a few days I will send you a Draft or Bill for some money.—
Show all the Drawings at once to Havell when you receive them—it will prove to him that the Water Birds have not more work upon them than the Land ones.—As many Birds have been Pasted, take great care of those Drawings and shew them to a very few of your Friends.—
The 3 Small Drawings of Land Birds being New Species I wish you to give them for the 3 extra small plates. —be sure that these go instead of hitherto known Birds which I have sent you and which you have, but which will come in the 4th Volume, a Volume which will be composed of both Land & Water Birds.—take good heart attend strictly to the Publication &c & all will go on well.—
Friend Bachman has finished another paper on Buzards, notes for this Country—and I shall have 200 Copies of it struck in a few days, for all our Subscribers here and others whom it may concern—
Good night God bless you.—
Make arrangements with Mrs Russel for us.—
Ever yours Father & Friend
John J. Audubon.
CHARLES W. ELIOT TO
CHARLES ELIOT, JR.
“If you feel the blues coming upon you,
get a book and a glass of wine . . .”
Following the Civil War the United States went through a period of astounding progress in industry, science, and engineering. Yet there was no greater advancement made than in the world of ideas. From 1869 to 1909, leading the way of advancement and reform in American education was Harvard president Charles W. Eliot. Modern American universities, as we know them today, were largely structured and shaped by the changes Eliot instituted during his forty-year tenure.
He believed individual interests, rather than requirements enforced by the university, should be t
he driving force guiding curriculum. He wanted students to be treated as adults. He felt that those Harvard students who were from modest means were “the very best part” of the university and he took great interest in their welfare. When word of a death in a student's family reached the university, it was the president himself who delivered the news to the young man. On more than one occasion he gave his house over to a student who was gravely ill.
With his eldest son, Charles, he had an unusually close friendship. Recognizing their differences, Eliot described himself as “sanguine, confident, content with present action,” whereas he thought his son to be “reticent, self-distrustful” and “speculative.” In 1886, having just finished an apprenticeship with Frederick Law Olmsted, twenty-six-year-old Charles was in Europe studying landscape architecture. He wrote to his father referring to himself as “incompetent in dealing with men.” Here Charles Eliot responds.
April 20, [18]86
Dear Charles,
Don't imagine yourself deficient in power of dealing with men. Such dealings as you have thus far had with boys and men you have conducted very suitably. There is no mystery about successful business intercourse with patrons and employés. Nobody can think, and at the same time pay attention to another person, as you seem to expect to do. On the contrary, exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you is a very important point in business manners. Nothing is so flattering as that. Some audible or visible signs of close attention are of course desirable. Then there is very seldom any objection to the statement, “I should like to think that over.” . . . I wish you were tough and strong like me. But you have nevertheless an available measure of strength, and within that measure an unusual capacity of enjoyment. In this respect you closely resemble your mother. She enjoyed more in her short life than most people in a long one; and particularly she delighted in natural scenery. You get a great deal more pleasure out of your present journeyings than I ever could have. I should not have your feelings of fatigue and weakness, but neither should I have your perception of the beautiful and your enjoyment of it. When you come to professional work, you will have to be moderate in it. Where other men work eight hours a day, you must be content with five. Take all things easily. Never tire yourself out. If you feel the blues coming upon you, get a book and a glass of wine, or go to bed and rest yourself. The morbid mental condition is of physical origin. Take comfort in the thought that you can have a life of moderate labor,—the best sort of life. You will have a little money of your own, and need not be in haste to earn a large income. I am strong and can work twelve hours a day. Consequently I do; and if it were not for Mt. Desert, I should hardly have more time for reflection and real living than an operative in a cotton mill. For a reasonable mortal, life cannot truly be said to have “terrors,” any more than death. The love of beauty is a very good and durable correspondence between your soul and the world; but the love of purity, gentleness, and honor is a better one.
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