Posterity (8 page)

Affectionately A hardened and wary old father
[Theodore Roosevelt]

“Why do'n't you write to Flora, and her father and
mother, asking if she wo'n't come
abroad and marry you?”

Oyster Bay, March 17, 1918

Dearest Quentin,

In a Rochester paper appeared a note from one Whaley, a superintendent of a post office “somewhere in France,” who writes “Young Quentin Roosevelt is as modest as a school girl, but as game as they make 'em in aviation. Keep tabs on this game young chap.”

Early in the week we were greatly depressed to learn that gallant young Tommy Hitchcock had been captured by the Germans; it is said that he was not hurt. Then came the excitement about Archie. The first news—whether true or not we do not know—was that he had been given the croix de guerre by a French General “under dramatic circumstances”; then the War Dept notified us that he was slightly wounded; then Ted cabled that he had been hit in the leg, and his arm broken, by shrapnel, but that he was in no danger, and that Eleanor would take care of him. Our pride and our anxiety are equal—as indeed they are about all of you.

Why do'n't you write to Flora, and to her father and mother, asking if she wo'n't come abroad and marry you? As for your getting killed, or ordinarily crippled afterwards, why she would a thousand times rather have married you than not have married you under those conditions; and as for the extraordinary kinds of crippling, they are rare, and anyway we have to take certain chances in life. You and she have now passed your period of probation; you have been tried; you are absolutely sure of yourselves; and I would most heartily approve of your getting married at the earliest possible moment.

Mr. Beebe is out here, he has just come from France; on the French front he was allowed to do some flying and bombing—not fighting the German war-planes.

Your loving father,
Theodore Roosevelt

On July 14, 1918, Quentin Roosevelt was shot in the head and killed by the Germans at Chemery, France. He was not yet twenty-one years old.

R
ICHARD
E
.
B
YRD TO
R
ICHARD
E
.
B
YRD,
J
R.

“My last words to you my boy are to beg you to
concentrate on your life to two things . . .”

On April 28, 1926, Commander Richard E. Byrd sat down in his cabin to write his six-year-old son. His ship, the S.S.
Chantier
, amidst ice fields and snow squalls, was steaming for Spitzbergen, Norway. In “a rough following sea” they had endured hard work and seasickness for days. The commander was about to attempt the first flight ever over the North Pole. He knew of the dangers of flying over ice, and in high winds, and through polar fog. He knew the greatest dangers were in the unknown, and he knew, too, that he might not survive. Here, in an unsteady hand, across six pages, Commander Byrd writes to his son.

En route Spitzbergen
April 28, 1926

My Precious Boy—

This letter is to be read twice by you on your eighth birthday then again on your fourteenth birthday, your sixteenth and once more every four years after that.

I want to tell you about your mother I am writing at sea in my cabin. The sea is very rough and icy winds are blowing from the ice fields of the polar sea. We arrive at Kings Bay tomorrow and from there I am to take a hazardous airplane flight over the Polar sea which is a cold and frozen ocean.

If by hard luck I do not get back this is my farewell to you my dear boy—which I know you will take very seriously and all your life I hope you will try to follow what I ask you to do.

When you reach manhood I will be only a vague memory to you—like a dream it will be. But now I am a very real factor in your life. Your sweet mother can tell you how I adore you. But even she does not realize the depth of my affection for you. You are everything a son should be—devoted, unselfish, thoughtful, generous and honorable with an unusual sense of justice. You have I am very thankful to say many of your mothers traits.

Your mother has been perfect to you absolutely devoted, unselfish and untiring where you are concerned. She has sacrificed herself for you ever since you were born and what I like most about you is that you appreciate her and love her above everything. You call her “sweet mommie” and every day when you return from playing outside you bring her something. When you walk with her you walk outside—nearest the street—to protect her from automobiles. You help her across the street and warn her not to stumble over stones, etc. Those little things my boy show that you are made of the right stuff. It is infinitely gratifying to me that you have sense enough and character enough to appreciate your mother. You have made her very happy. She may not need your help now but if I do not come back home she will need your help—you will have to take my place as much as you can.

I have loved your mother since we were little children and I have never known her to do an unkind or unjust thing. She is the sweetest, purest human being I have ever known or have ever heard of. She is an angel—too good I am afraid for this world. My boy I worship her. She is the kind who never hesitates to sacrifice herself for those she loves and then think nothing of it nor look for credit.

Youth is cruel and thoughtless and has little consideration for age, but I believe you will be an exception to this rule. I believe that you will always try to help your mother over the rough places just as you would like to do even now as a child. She is very, very proud of you and so don't let shadow or stain ever darken your name. Anything dishonorable that you would do would break her heart.

Whatever comes up you will find her the best sport you have ever known. I have never met a man whose sense of fair play and sportsmanship equaled hers. She is a thoroughbred—every inch of her.

My last words to you my boy are to beg you to concentrate on your life to two things—first to understand, cherish and protect you mother—and secondly to emulate her in all matters. model yourself as much as you can after her for she is the finest person in the world.

Don't forget the small attentions. Don't stop bringing her things when you go away and come back to her. If you marry for Gods sake dont select a woman who will not like your mother or who might come in between you and her. Women are jealous of each other—specially a wife of a mother. Do not marry too hastily.

Your mother has an extraordinarily logical mind so you cannot go wrong if you will always take her advise. I have done so as a rule and she has never made a mistake.

Dickie old boy do what your mother wants you to do. She is the only one in the world who will advise you with only your own good in view. But don't let her be too unselfish with you as she has with me.

And so my boy I will end where I began—follow your mothers advise and try to make yourself as much as possible like her with her great sense of honor. She is the very soul of honor.

Remember always that whatever she does is right. She can do no wrong. You and I want her happiness more than anything else in the world. Therefore
whatever
she may do to make her happy you must back up whole heartedly.

Always put honor and your mother first. Goodbye my darling boy.

Your devoted father
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.

S
HERWOOD
A
NDERSON TO
J
OHN
A
NDERSON

“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.

E
UGENE
O'N
EILL TO
E
UGENE
O'N
EILL,
J
R.

“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.