The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume I Part 7

It's the end of the year. Mrs. Page and I (alone!) have been talking of democracy, of these very things I've written. The bell-ringing and the dancing and the feasting are not, on this particular year, to our liking. We see all our children gone--half of them to nests of their own building, the rest on errands of their own pleasure, and we are left, young yet, but the main job of life behind us! We're going down to a cottage in southern North Carolina (with our own cook and motor car, praise G.o.d!) for February, still further to think this thing out and incidentally to build us a library, in which we'll live when we can. That, for convention's sake, we call a Vacation.

Your brave note came to-day. Of course, you'll "get" 'em--those small enemies. The gain of twelve pounds tells the story. The danger is, your season of philosophy and reverie will be too soon ended. Don't fret; the work and the friends will be here when you come down. There's many a long day ahead; and there may not be so many seasons of rest and meditation. You are the only man I know who has time enough to think out a clear answer to this: "What ought to be done with Bryan?" What _can_ be done with Bryan? When you find the answer, telegraph it to me.

I've a book or two more to send you. If they interest you, praise the G.o.ds. If they bore you, fling 'em in the snow and think no worse of me. You can't tell what a given book may be worth to a given man in an unknown mood. They've become such a commodity to me that I thank my stars for a month away from them when I may come at 'em at a different angle and really need a few old ones--Wordsworth, for instance. When you get old enough, you'll wake up some day with the feeling that the world is much more beautiful than it was when you were young, that a landscape has a closer meaning, that the sky is more companionable, that outdoor colour and motion are more splendidly audacious and beautifully rhythmical than you had ever thought. That's true. The gently snow-clad little pines out my window are more to me than the whole Taft Administration. They'll soon be better than the year's dividends. And the few great craftsmen in words who can confirm this feeling--they are the masters you become grateful for. Then the sordidness of the world lies far beneath you and your great democracy is truly come--the democracy of Nature. To be akin to a tree, in this sense, is as good as to be akin to a man. I have a grove of little long-leaf pines down in the old country and I know they'll have some consciousness of me after all men have forgotten me: I've saved 'em, and they'll sing a century of grat.i.tude if I can keep 'em saved. Joe Holmes gave me a dissertation on them the other day. He was down there "on a little Sunday jaunt" of forty miles--the best legs and the best brain that ever worked together in one anatomy.

A conquering New Year--that's what you'll find, begun before this reaches you, carrying all good wishes from

Yours affectionately,

W.H.P.

To Edwin A. Alderman

Garden City, New York,

January 26, 1913.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

This has been "Board" [10] week, as you know. The men came from all quarters of the land, and we had a good time. New work is opening; old work is going well; the fellows.h.i.+p ran in good tide--except that everybody asked everybody else: "What do you know about Alderman?" Everybody who had late news of you gave a good report.

The Southern Board formally pa.s.sed a resolution to send affectionate greetings to you and high hope and expectation, and I was commissioned to frame the message. This is it. I shall write no formal resolution, for that wasn't the spirit of it. The fellows all asked me, singly and collectively, to send their love. And we don't put that sort of a message under _whereases_ and _wherefores_. There they were, every one of them, except Peabody and Bowie. Mr. Ogden in particular was anxious for his emphatic remembrance and good wishes to go. The dear old man is fast pa.s.sing into the last stage of his illness and he knows it and he soon expects the end, in a mood as brave and as game as he ever was. I am sorry to tell you he suffers a good deal of pain.

What a fine thing to look back over--this Southern Board's work!

Here was a fine, zealous merchant twenty years ago, then fifty-seven years old, who saw this big job as a modest layman. If he had known more about "Education" or more about "the South, bygawd, sir!" he'd never have had the courage to tackle the job.

But with the bravery of ignorance, he turned out to be the wisest man on that task in our generation. He has united every real, good force, and he showed what can be done in a democracy even by one zealous man. I've sometimes thought that this is possibly the wisest single piece of work that I have ever seen done--_wisest_, not smartest. I don't know what can be done when he's gone. His phase of it is really done. But, if another real leader arise, there will doubtless be another phase.

The General Board doesn't find much more college-endowing to do. We made only one or two gifts. But we are trying to get the country school task rightly focussed. We haven't done it yet; but we will.

b.u.t.trick and Rose will work it out. I wish to G.o.d I could throw down my practical job and go at it with 'em. Darned if I couldn't get it going! though _I_ say it, as shouldn't. And we are going pretty soon to begin with the medical colleges; that, I think, is good--very.

But the most efficient workmanlike piece of organization that my mortal eyes have ever seen is Rose's hookworm worm work. We're going soon to organize country life in a sanitary way, the county health officer being the biggest man on the horizon. Stiles has moved his marine hospital and his staff to Wilmington, North Carolina, and he and the local health men are quietly going to make New Hanover the model county for sanitary condition and efficiency.

You'll know what a vast revolution that denotes!--And Congress seems likely to charter the big Rockefeller Foundation, which will at once make five millions available for chasing the hookworm off the face of the earth. Rose will spread himself over Honduras, etc., etc., and China, and India! This does literally beat the devil; for, if the hookworm isn't the devil, what is?

I'm going to farming. I've two brothers and two sons, all young and strong, who believe in the game. We have land without end, thousands of acres; engines to pull stumps, to plough, to plant, to reap. The n.i.g.g.e.r go hang! A white boy with an engine can outdo a dozen of 'em. Cotton and corn for staple crops; peaches, figs, scuppernongs, vegetables, melons for incidental crops; G.o.d's good air in North Carolina; good roads, too--why, man, Moore County has authorized the laying out of a strip of land along all highways to be planted in shrubbery and fruit trees and kept as a park, so that you will motor for 100 miles through odorous bloom in spring!--I mean I am going down there to-morrow for a month, one day for golf at Pinehurst, the next day for clearing land with an oil locomotive, ripping up stumps! Every day for life out-of-doors and every night, too. I'm going to grow dasheens. You know what a dasheen is? It's a Trinidad potato, which keeps and tastes like a sweet potato stuffed with chestnuts. There are lots of things to learn in this world.

G.o.d bless us all, old man. It's a pretty good world, whether seen from the petty excitements of reforming the world and dreaming of a diseaseless earth in New York, or from the stump-pulling recreation of a North Carolina wilderness.

Health be with you!

W.H.P.

To Edwin A. Alderman

Garden City, L.I.

March 10, 1913.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

I'm home from a month of perfect climate in the sandhills of North Carolina, where I am preparing a farm and building a home at least for winter use; and I had the most instructive and interesting month of my life there. I believe I see, even in my life-time, the coming of a kind of man and a kind of life that shall come pretty near to being the model American citizen and the model American way to live. Half of it is climate; a fourth of it occupation; the other fourth, companions.h.i.+p. And the climate (with what it does) is three fourths companions.h.i.+p.

Then I came to Was.h.i.+ngton and saw Wilson made President--a very impressive experience indeed. The future--G.o.d knows; but I believe in Wilson very thoroughly. Men fool him yet. Men fool us all. He has already made some mistakes. But he's sound. And, if we have moral courage enough to beat back the grafters, little and big--I mean if we, the people, will vote two years and four years hence, to keep them back, I think that we shall now really work toward a democratic government. I have a stronger confidence in government now as an instrument of human progress than I have ever had before.

And I find it an exhilarating and exciting experience.

I have seen many of your good friends in North Carolina, Virginia, and Was.h.i.+ngton. How we all do love you, old man! Don't forget that, in your successful fight. And, with my affectionate greetings to Mrs. Alderman, ask her to send me the news of your progress.

Always affectionately yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

_To Edwin A. Alderman_

On the _Baltic_, New York to Liverpool,

May 19, 1913.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

It was the best kind of news I heard of you during my last weeks at home--every day of which I wished to go to Briarcliff to see you.

At a distance, it seems absurd to say that it was impossible to go.

But it was. I set down five different days in my calendar for this use; and somehow every one of them was taken. Two were taken by unexpected calls to Was.h.i.+ngton. Another was taken by my partners who arranged a little good-bye dinner. Another was taken by the British Amba.s.sador--and so on. Absurd--of course it was absurd, and I feel now as if it approached the criminal. But every stolen day I said, "Well, I'll find another." But another never came.

But good news of you came by many hands and mouths. My congratulations, my cheers, my love, old man. Now when you do take up work again, don't take up all the work. Show the fine virtue called self-restraint. We work too much and too hard and do too many things even when we are well. There are three t.i.tled Englishmen who sit at the table with me on this s.h.i.+p--one a former Lord Mayor of London, another a peer, and the third an M.P. d.a.m.n their self-sufficiencies! They do excite my envy. _They_ don't shoulder the work of the world: they shoulder the world and leave the work to be done by somebody else. Three days' stories and political discussion with them have made me wonder why the devil I've been so industrious all my life. They know more than I know; they are richer than I am; they have been about the world more than I have; they are far more influential than I am; and yet one of them asked me to-day if George Was.h.i.+ngton was a born American! I said to him, "Where the devil do you suppose he came from--Hades?"

And he laughed at himself as heartily as the rest of us laughed at him, and didn't care a hang!

If that's British, I've a mind to become British; and, the point is, you must, too. Work is a curse. There was some truth in that old doctrine. At any rate a little of it must henceforth go a long way with you.

A sermon? Yes. But, since it's a good one, I know you'll forgive me; for it is preached in love, my dear boy, and accompanied with the hearty and insistent hope that you'll write to me.

Affectionately, WALTER PAGE.

This last letter apparently antic.i.p.ates the story. A few weeks before it was written President Wilson had succeeded in carrying out his determination to make Page an important part of his Administration. One morning Page's telephone rang and Colonel House's well-known and well-modulated voice came over the wire.

"Good morning, Your Excellency," was his greeting.

"What the devil are you talking about?" asked Page.

Then Colonel House explained himself. The night before, he said, he had dined at the White House. In a pause of the conversation the President had quietly remarked:

"I've about made up my mind to send Walter Page to England. What do you think of that?"

Colonel House thought very well of it indeed and the result of his conversation was this telephone call, in which he was authorized to offer Page the Amba.s.sadors.h.i.+p to Great Britain.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: Mr. David F. Houston, ex-President of the University of Texas, and in 1912 Chancellor of the Was.h.i.+ngton University of St.

Louis.]

[Footnote 8: Charles R. Van Hise, President of the University of Wisconsin.]