Posterity (16 page)

Ostende, Belgium
April 22nd 1861

My Dear, Sweet little Louise,

Your affectionate and beautiful letter came to me yesterday, and I lose no time in answering it, to tell you what pleasure it has brought me: this I shall scarely be able to do for there are many things which language was not made perfect enough to express or explain.

One of these things is the paternal and filial affections which connects parents and children together—when like cords, they are stretched, but not snapped, by distance and long absence.

My dear child, I have read your affectionate letter over and over, with tears in my eyes, and I thank you for every line of it. It is so tender—so loving—so devotional. My conduct has broken your hearts, but my lovely children I pray to God that He may help you to forgive me. He is my witness that I have done the best I could under cruel and painful circumstances. You can imagine somewhat of the shame, the pain, the anguish of an affectionate and loving parent so long separated from those that he most loves—that he idolizes, but you can never know the whole of it. The labours and fatigues I have been through since we parted have been many, as well as my successes and misfortunes. I made a fortune for you since I saw you, but I lost it again. I have seen much and I have done much—I have traveled much, and for the last year and a half I have suffered much—I have stood upon the crater of the two volcanos in the Koriak Mountains of Siberia. I have been to the Aleutian Islands, & Kamchatka, traced the Pacific Coast to the mouth of Columbia—ascended that and crossed the Rocky Mountains to Santa Fe—from that to Matamoras, by the Rio Colorado—from that to Cuba—to the Amazon, (the second time) to Venezuela to Bolivia—to Perou—to Equador—to Central Ama—to Yucatan—Palenque to Uxmal &c &c. The expenses of traveling in foreign lands are enormous, & I have had nothing but my own hands with the talent which the Almighty gave me (perhaps for that purpose) to pay my way. You can imagine, my dear child that I have travelled to a disadvantage—that my life has been a rough one, & that I have had to labour hard and constantly, to go through what I have done. I have had no time for pleasure or enjoyment, save those which my labours and the thoughts of my dear little children have afforded me. If my life had been thrown away in idleness or dissipations during these long years of absence there would be no excuse for me. I would be a monster, and I should have no right to ask forgiveness of my dear little angels, but I have been constantly at work, and still am so, even when lying on my back, or hobbling about on Crutches.

I know by my recollections of your early taste as well as by the graceful and prettily formed lines in your letter that you have a talent for the Art; and I believe (yes, that you
can
“help me”) I think I am preparing enough for your delicate little fingers to work on for a long time, if you are disposed to do so, and for the benefit of yourself and your dear sisters, when I shall be dead and gone. These things I intend to bring to you before long, if our Country is not deluged in blood which I am any day afraid to hear of.

Your sweet and pretty little postcard came safe in your letter, as well as one from Clara, & one from Libby in her letter from Cincinnati. Oh how pretty they look to me—and how they accuse me. Clara told me in her last letter that both you and she had written me before, but I never have rec
d
those letters, nor can I account for them. I have now but two traces from your little fingers on earth—the one is your composition in French, on La Morgue—and the other, the affectionate letter which I rec
d
yesterday. I came to Ostende about 10 days since, having been in London for a few days, hobbling about on one Crutch. I have now no appearance of any further volcanic affairs in my knee, but I am still a cripple. And such I fear I shall be for the remainder of my days. I suffer considerable pain at times, and mostly in the night, when one should suppose I should be most at ease. While I hobble about in the open air, and keep in motion, I get along tolerably well; but after sitting for a while it is hard starting. I am
giving myself pain
in walking, in order to prevent a crooked leg.

Libby wrote me that Mr. Dudley Gregory had been very ill—this I am sorry to hear, but I hope he has greatly recovered. I shall always sympathize deeply and tenderly with such any afflictions amongst those who have been so kind to my little daughters. How long I shall be in Ostende I know not—it matters little where I am now, as I require but a small space and am solely occupied in writing. And there is such a splendid promenade here on the parapet between the town and the beach—in the sea air, that I believe it may be the best place I could be in. Letters addressed to me at present, to
Porte Restard
,
Ostende
,
Belgique
will be sure to reach me. Give my love to dear,
dear
little Clara, and tell her that I will answer her letter in a few days. Remember me affectionately to all those so kind to you and rest assured that I have never for a moment lost that love that I always had for my dear little girls.

Your affectionate parent
Geo. Catlin.

I send a kiss.

George Catlin was reunited with his daughters in 1870, but he did not live to know that his “Indian Gallery” was, in 1879, donated to the United States government by the family of Joseph Harrison. The collection is now at the Smithsonian Institution.

W
ILLIAM
J
AMES TO
M
ARGARET
M
ARY
J
AMES

“The disease makes you think of yourself all the time;
and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can
thinking of things and of other people.”

Philosopher, writer, scientist, and psychologist, William James was a towering figure in America's intellectual golden age. In 1872, at the age of thirty, he was recruited to teach at Harvard, just as it was being transformed into a vigorous modern university. Through his teaching and writing, he came to be known as the father of modern psychology. A member of the esteemed James family (his brother was the novelist Henry James), William James was brilliant, apprehensive, intellectually irreverent, and often insecure.

Plagued most of his adult life by various ailments and debilitating depression, he and his wife, Alice, spent 1899 and 1900 traveling about Europe in seach of treatment for his seriously diseased heart. Their thirteen-year-old daughter, Peggy, stayed in England with family friends. Feeling lonely and isolated and fearing for her father's health, Peggy was overwhelmed with anxiety. Here psychologist James, a man who had firsthand experience with emotional breakdown and once described himself as his children's “half-cracked neurotic daddy,” writes to his distressed daughter. The letter was written fifteen years before Sigmund Freud published his first essay on depression.

Villa Luise, Bad-Nauheim,|May 26, 1900.

Darling Peg,

Your letter came last night & explained sufficiently the cause of your long silence. You have evidently been in a bad state of spirits again, and dissatisfied with your environment; and I judge that you have been still more dissatisfied with the inner state of trying to consume your own smoke, and grin and bear it, so as to carry out your mother's behests made after the time when you scared us so by your inexplicable tragic outcries in those earlier letters. Well! I believe you have been trying to do the manly thing under difficult circumstances, but one learns only gradually to do the
best
thing, and the best thing for you would be to write at least weekly, if only a post-card, and say just how things are going. If you are in bad spirits, there is no harm whatever in communicating that fact, and defining the character of it, or describing it as exactly as you like. The bad thing is to pour out the
contents
of ones bad spirits on others and leave them with it, as it were, on their hands, as if it was for them to do something about it. That was what you did in your other letter which alarmed us so, for your shrieks of anguish were so excessive and so unexplained by anything you told us in the way of facts, that we didn't know but what you had suddenly gone crazy. That is the
worst
sort of thing you can do. The
middle
sort of thing is what you do this time—namely keep silent for more than a fortnight, and when you do write, still write rather mysteriously about your sorrows, not being quite open enough. Now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when the inward life developes, and when some people (and on the whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is not a bed of roses. Among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; and dissatisfaction with one's self, and irritation at others, and anger at circumstances and stony insensibility, etc., etc, which taken together form a melancholy. Now, painful as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. It always passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to learn a great many good things if we react on it rightly.* Many persons take a kind of sickly delight in hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. Such persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. That is the worst possible reaction on it. It is usually a sort of disease, when we get it strong; arising from the organism having generated some poison in the blood; and we mustn't submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or comic, or take part in any thing active that will divert us from our mean pining inward state of feeling. When it passes off, as I said, we know more than we did before. And we must try to make it last as short a time as possible. The worst of it often is that while we are in it, we don't
want
to get out of it. We hate it, & yet we prefer staying in it—that is a part of the disease. If we find ourselves like that, we must make ourselves
do
something different, go with people, speak cheerfully, set ourselves to some hard work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. The disease makes you think of
yourself
all the time; and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking of
things
and of
other people
—no matter what's the matter with our Self. I have no doubt you are doing as well as you know how, darling little Peg; but we have to learn everything, and I also have no doubt that you'll manage it better and better if you ever have any more of it, and soon it will fade away, simply leaving you with more experience. The great thing for you
now
, I should suppose, would be to enter as friendlily as possible into the interests of the Clark children. If you like them, or acted as if you liked them, you needn't trouble about the question of whether they like
you
or not. They probably will, fast enough; and if they don't, it will be their funeral, not yours. But this is a great lecture, so I will stop. The great thing about it is that it is all true.

The baths are threatening to disagree with me again, so I may stop them soon. Will let you know as quick as anything is decided. Good news from home: the Merrimans have taken the Irving street house for another year, and the Wambaughs (of the Law School) have taken Chocorua, though at a reduced rent. The weather here is almost continuously cold & sunless. Your mother is sleeping, and will doubtless add a word to this when she wakes. Keep a merry heart—“time & the hour run through the roughest day.” And believe me ever your most loving

W.J.

* For instance, you learn how good a thing your home is, and your country, & your brothers; and you may learn to be more considerate of other people, who, you now learn, may have their inner weaknesses, and sufferings too.

J
OHN
J
.
P
ERSHING TO
F
.
W
ARREN
P
ERSHING

“I especially miss you at night.”

Straight, stern, a stickler for manners and courtesy, General John J. Pershing commanded respect. He was the hero of the Great War and the only American since George Washington ever to reach the highest military rank of all, General of the Armies. Those in his command knew him to be impressive, yet cold, stubborn, and inflexible. And they knew, too, what personal tragedy he had endured. On the night of August 27, 1915, General Pershing's wife, Frankie, and their three daughters, Helen, Anne, and Mary Margaret, were killed in a fire that swept through their San Francisco Presidio home. For Pershing all was lost, all except his little blond-haired boy, Warren.

Not quite two years after the catastrophic fire, General Pershing was named commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe. He worked determinedly to build an independent American army, but by the early spring of 1918 Germany was forcefully on the offensive. “Extreme pessimism prevailed” as the French and British lost ground and troops lost heart. In March 1918, it seemed France might be lost, and in a dramatic move, Pershing temporarily laid aside American plans and quickly offered U.S. troops to replenish the ranks of the French and British militaries. At the time he was in command of 500,000 men in Europe; the number would swell to nearly 2.5 million by war's end.

Here, on May 9, 1918, in the midst of war, the commander-in-chief writes a kind and longing letter to his only surviving child, eight-year-old Warren, across the ocean nearly five thousand miles away. The boy, who had lost his mother and all his sisters and who sent his adored father “one million kisses,” was now living a quiet life in Lincoln, Nebraska, cared for by the general's maiden sister, May Pershing.

France, May 9, 1918.
Master Warren Pershing,
1748 B Street,
Lincoln, Nebraska.

My dear Warren:

I have just had a very pretty horseback ride along the Marne. You know the Marne River rises in Eastern France and flows into the Seine just east of Paris. It is a beautiful river and has a canal along its entire course. The banks of the canal are level and grassy and, usually, lined with trees. We frequently take horseback rides along this canal because it is so lovely and because the banks are soft for the horses' feet.