Posterity (23 page)

J
OHN
D
.
R
OCKEFELLER TO
J
OHN
D
.
R
OCKFELLER,
J
R.

“Respecting your kind offer of the Rolls-Royce . . . if it
would be your pleasure to give me this value
in cash, in place of the car . . .”

In celebration of John D. Rockefeller's ninetieth birthday, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., wanted to give his father a Rolls-Royce. At first, the elder Rockefeller gratefully protested, claiming that he had enough cars and was reluctant to set an extravagant example for “all our young people coming along, and our neighbors and others.” Then the old man had second thoughts.

Golf House
Lakewood, NJ
June 13, 1929

Dear Son:

After reflection in the night, last night, I am emboldened to say, respecting your kind offer of the Rolls-Royce in yours of the 10th, and my answer of yesterday, that if it would be your pleasure to give me this value in cash, in place of the car, I would be glad to make judicious use of it in connection with my most needy charity cases, thus making the investment of the greatest value to us both.

This is only a suggestion, and you must exercise your own good judgement, with which, be assured, I shall be perfectly satisfied.

With tenderest affection,
Father

On July 5, the son sent the father “$19,000 being the cost of a Rolls-Royce car which I offered you, and instead of which you said you'd prefer to have cash.”

M
OE
H
OWARD TO
J
OAN
S
ALLY
H
OWARD

“And well behaved I'm telling you . . .”

Creator and star of the vaudeville, movie, and television act “The Three Stooges,” Moe Howard, along with his cohorts, delighted generations of Americans with outrageous antics. Howard was best known as the comedian who got laughs by banging his costars' heads together, poking them in the eyes, and kicking their shins. However, his daughter, Joan, described “Moe without mayhem” as a loving father and husband who spent many lonely hours on the road. Howard filled the time between acts by making hook rugs and crocheting afghan blankets. The following poem was written by Moe Howard from a hotel room in Toronto to his eight-year-old daughter at home in California.

[circa 1936]

To my little Pal

I miss and love a little girl,
She's awfully cute and sweet,
To me she's precious as a pearl,
So sweet and hard to beat.

She has red curls and freckles too,
The sweetest loving Pal,
And well behaved I'm telling you,
I call her Joanie-Sal.

I'm waiting patiently to see,
My Joanie doll and all,
I know they're waiting home for me,
with my little Skipper Paul!

Daddy Dear

G
ROUCHO
M
ARX TO
A
RTHUR
M
ARX

“I've often wondered why people drink.
It's gradually beginning to dawn on me.”

Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx was twentieth-century America's wiseguy. First, with his brothers Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo and then as a solo act, he elevated innuendo to the level of an art form. He was known for his cigar and his grease-paint mustache and for so many memorable slapstick lines like “Remember we're fighting for her honor—which is probably more than she ever did.” Making fun of middle-class America, he struck at people's vulnerabilities, yet he himself described his humor as being the kind “that made people laugh at themselves.”

In 1940 his marriage to the socially ambitious Ruth Johnson, the mother of his two children, was nearing its end. Away from the discontented Beverly Hills household on a tennis tournament tour was Marx's son, nineteen-year-old Arthur. “My tennis was so-so,” wrote Arthur, “but the letters I received from Father . . . made the tours worthwhile.”

Summer of 1940

Dear Art:

For a tennis bum, you're certainly leading a luxurious life and I only hope you can keep it up. I see by the papers that it rained in St. Louis yesterday, so that gave you time to eat six meals at the hotel instead of the customary five.

We just came back from Lake Arrowhead. It's a wonderful spot and we had a fine time sailing on the lake. With the wind on my back, I was Sir Thomas Lipton, Sir Francis Drake and Captain Kidd. However, when I tried to tack against it and sail into home plate, I botched it up completely and finally had to suffer the humiliation of being towed back to port by a small boy in an outboard motor. This made Miriam very happy, for during the entire voyage she kept telling me that I didn't know how to manipulate a sailboat and predicted that it was only a question of time before I'd be towed back to shore. Despite my inadequacies as commander, I would spend a good part of my declining years on the bounding waves. That's really the life. You need no golf ball, no caddy, no racket or busted gut. All you need is a stout heart, a strong back, plenty of wind and a cast-iron stomach. Avast, mates! Yo-ho and a bottle of rum! Tonight I'll listen to “Pinafore” on the record player.

We expect to start shooting around July first, so for the next eight weeks you can reach me on the back lot at MGM. Please bring ice packs and menthol and a portable air conditioner.

I'm brushing up on all the current movies. I saw “Strange Cargo” and was having a pretty good time until the head usher at the Marquis tapped me on the shoulder and sharply told me that no smoking was allowed.

He walked away and I began smoking again. Again he tapped me on the shoulder. This time he didn't walk away—he just stood there, arms folded, and glared at the back of my head. Then my cigar went out: and then I went out. Sometime, I wish you'd let me know what happened to the nature girl in the last four reels.

Last night, I saw “Waterloo Bridge” at the Westwood Theater. It's quite a bit different from the old version. MGM, being a more leisurely studio, didn't make the girl a streetwalker until the fourth reel. In the original version, they opened up in the first reel with the little lady hustling on Waterloo Bridge. It was better that way—I could get home earlier.

I can't write any more at this time as I have to take dancing lessons for the next three days. Our friends, the Arthur Murrays, have bestowed the lessons upon us, which, you may be sure, is the only reason I am submitting to them.

Love,
Padre

P.S. Saturday night, the Beverly Hills Tennis and Bad Food club is throwing a barn dance and it's going to be a sensation. How surprised we'll all be when we gather there that evening to see all the new faces that we had left only an hour before on the tennis court.

The food won't be served until midnight, so I've arranged with your mother to pay for the privilege of eating stale delicatessen food and listening to Dave's wife, who used to be a showgirl, sing a medley of airs from “The Chocolate Soldier.” If this keeps up, I may take to drinking in a serious way. I've often wondered why people drink. It's gradually beginning to dawn on me.

“I don't know whether you have ever been a dog—
I know you look like one—but it has certain
advantages and disadvantages.”

Five years later Groucho Marx's dog, Duke, writes to twenty-three-year-old Arthur, who was serving in the United States Coast Guard in the Philippines.

Beverly Hills, California,
February 16, 1945

Dear Art,

Irene was telling me that in the letters you receive nobody mentions my name. This is not unusual; it happens to many dogs. You know, it's a strange thing, but once you walk around on four legs, instead of the orthodox two, people begin to suspect that you don't know what's going on. I don't know whether you have ever been a dog—I know you look like one—but it has certain advantages and disadvantages. Your father, as you know, and I both live under the same roof. He is not a bad guy, despite the fact that he kicks me occasionally, especially those days when the market goes down. When he strokes me affectionately, I know then that the stocks are on the upswing. I watch your old man very closely, although I don't imagine he thinks I do, and he is quite a character. He reads the paper every morning, worries about the war, the position of the Jews in this country, and all the other problems that the morning paper presents. I don't know whether I ever told you this, Arthur, but I am also partly Jewish. As you know, I originally came from the Schulberg family. Ben, who used to be the head of Paramount, was my father. My mother was Rin-Tin-Tin's stand-in, a beautiful red-headed airedale. I worry a good deal, too, about the Jews, and when I go out in the morning with your old man, many of the dogs I meet won't permit me within smelling distance. There is one dog, on Lomitas near Foothill who despises me. She's an Irish setter and goes to early mass every Sunday morning. She's a real anti-Semite and I have frequently seen her with a copy of Father Coughlin's Social Justice tied to her tail.

Your father and I have many run-ins these days. You see, he can't get it into his thick skull that I have come of age and that sex is just as necessary to me as it is to him. There's a beautiful collie in the 500 block on Palm Drive that thinks I'm a pretty hot dog. I'm crazy about her and, although it isn't good for my social prestige to be seen around with a bitch from the 500 block, I try to be broadminded about it and not too dogmatic in my views. I've done considerable running away in recent months—sometimes for days. It isn't that I don't like your father but my freedom is terribly important to me and I am not going to relinquish it for that mangy pound and a half of horse meat that he tosses at me each evening. I may not even go with him when he moves to Westwood. The backyard is exceedingly small and there is a hell of a high steel picket fence surrounding it. I am convinced that if I try to scale this enclosure I will probably be disemboweled, so I may solve the whole think by just remaining in Beverly, feeding out of garbage cans and living a dog's life with my collie.

Well, I could go on and tell you many tales of my adventures in the hills of Beverly but I don't want to bore you. The only reason I wrote you at all was because I didn't want you to think that I was an out-of-sight out-of-mind dog. As a matter of fact, I miss you a lot and if you could send me a few bones, even those of a Jap, I certainly would appreciate it.

By the way, when you write to your father again, remember, not a word about this letter—he doesn't know I can write, in fact, he thinks I'm a complete schmuck.

Well, take care of yourself. That's the leash you can do.

Your old pal,
Duke Marx

F. Scott Fitzgerald and daughter Scottie

Jack London and daughter Joan

Thomas Edison (center) and Thomas Edison, Jr. (far right)

Brace-Up

T
HOMAS
J
EFFERSON TO
M
ARTHA
“P
ATSY
” J
EFFERSON

“Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes it with so silent, yet so baneful a tooth, as indolence.”

Indolence, a dissatisfaction resulting from a lack of interest, and ennui, a disinclination to work, were intolerable to Thomas Jefferson. He was fascinated by almost all that was around him—history, philosophy, the law, design, architecture, agriculture, painting, sculpture, music, horses, fossils, antiquities. And his interest was not passive. As an architect he designed Monticello, the Virginia state capitol, and the original campus of the University of Virginia. He performed horticultural experiments. He played the violin. And he wrote—political pamphlets, the Declaration of Independence, a book about Virginia, and it is estimated nearly fifty thousand letters. Neither indolence nor ennui were manifest in Thomas Jefferson.

Here he responds to his fifteen-year-old daughter, Martha, who had complained slightly about her reading of the Roman historian Livy.

Aix en Provence March. 28. 1787.

I was happy, my dear Patsy, to receive, on my arrival here, your letter informing me of your health and occupations. I have not written to you sooner because I have been almost constantly on the road. My journey hitherto has been a very pleasing one. It was undertaken with the hope that the mineral waters of this place might restore strength to my wrist. Other considerations also concurred. Instruction, amusement, and abstraction from business, of which I had too much at Paris. I am glad to learn that you are employed in things new and good in your music and drawing. You know what have been my fears for some time past; that you do not employ yourself so closely as I could wish. You have promised me a more assiduous attention, and I have great confidence in what you promise. It is your future happiness which interests me, and nothing can contribute more to it (moral rectitude always excepted) than the contracting a habit of industry and activity. Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes it with so silent, yet so baneful a tooth, as indolence. Body and mind both unemployed, our being becomes a burthen, and every object about us loathsome, even the dearest. Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondria, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical. Exercise and application produce order in our affairs, health of body, chearfulness of mind, and these make us precious to our friends. It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward. The fortune of our lives therefore depends on employing well the short period of youth. If at any moment, my dear, you catch yourself in idleness, start from it as you would from the precipice of a gulph. You are not however to consider yourself as unemployed while taking exercise. That is necessary for your health, and health is the first of all objects. For this reason if you leave your dancing master for the summer, you must increase your other exercise. I do not like your saying that you are unable to read the antient print of your Livy, but with the aid of your master. We are always equal to what we undertake with resolution. A little degree of this will enable you to decypher your Livy. If you always lean on your master, you will never be able to proceed without him. It is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance. In Europe there are shops for every want. Its inhabitants therefore have no idea that their wants can be furnished otherwise. Remote from all other aid, we are obliged to invent and to execute; to find means within ourselves, and not to lean on others. Consider therefore the conquering of your Livy as an exercise in the habit of surmounting difficulties, a habit which will be necessary to you in the country where you are to live, and without which you will be thought a very helpless animal, and less esteemed. Music, drawing, books, invention and exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui. But there are others which to this object add that of utility. These are the needle, and domestic oeconomy. The latter you cannot learn here, but the former you may. In the country life of America there are many moments when a woman can have recourse to nothing but her needle for employment. In a dull company and in dull weather for instance. It is ill manners to read; it is ill manners to leave them; no card playing there among genteel people; that is abandoned to blackguards. The needle is then a valuable resource. Besides without knowing to use it herself, how can the mistress of a family direct the works of her servants? You ask me to write you long letters. I will do it my dear, on condition you will read them from time to time, and practice what they will inculcate. Their precepts will be dictated by experience, by a perfect knowledge of the situation in which you will be placed, and by the fondest love for you. This it is which makes me wish to see you more qualified than common. My expectations from you are high: yet not higher than you may attain. Industry and resolution are all that are wanting. No body in this world can make me so happy, or so miserable as you. Retirement from public life will ere long become necessary for me. To your sister and yourself I look to render the evening of my life serene and contented. Its morning has been clouded by loss after loss till I have nothing left but you. I do not doubt either your affection or dispositions. But great exertions are necessary, and you have little time left to make them. Be industrious then, my dear child. Think nothing unsurmountable by resolution and application, and you will be all that I wish you to be. You ask me if it is my desire you should dine at the abbess's table? It is. Propose it as such to Madame de Traubenheim with my respectful compliments and thanks for her care of you. Continue to love me with all the warmth with which you are beloved by, my dear Patsy, yours affectionately.

TH: JEFFERSON

M
ARY
T
ODD
L
INCOLN TO
R
OBERT
T
ODD
L
INCOLN

“You have injured yourself, not me,
by your wicked conduct.”

Mary Todd Lincoln could turn from tenderness to rage in an instant and wherever money was concerned she was usually irrational. Acquisitive beyond reason, she lavished upon herself extravagant gifts of elegant clothing, jewels, lace, china, silver, crystal, watches, and gloves. Thrilled by and obsessed with the act of making a purchase, she left many of the things she bought unused and unopened even, and with the credit extended her she often incurred enormous debt.

Her life was tragic in the extreme and she was destroyed by the experience. The loss of her husband to an assassin and the deaths of three of her four sons of fever, one after another over the course of twenty-one years, led in 1875 to a moment of deep crisis. Her actions—she was hallucinating, shopping irrationally, carrying $57,000 worth of securities in her skirt pocket, and wandering the halls of her Chicago hotel half-dressed—led her only remaining child, firstborn Robert, to commit her to Bellevue Place sanitarium on the basis of insanity.

One year after she was institutionalized, Mary Todd Lincoln, aged fifty-eight, was released to the care of her sister and brother-in-law. She wrote the following letter to Robert just three days after her departure from Bellevue. (It is important to note that only a few years earlier she wrote affectionately to Robert's wife, “Anything and everything is yours . . . it will be such a relief to me to know that articles can be used and enjoyed by you.”)

Springfield, Illinois
June 19th—1876

Robert T. Lincoln

Do not fail to send me without
the least
delay,
all
my paintings, Moses in the bullrushes included—also the fruit picture, which hung in your dining room—my silver set with large silver waiter presented me by my New York friends, my silver tete-a-tete set also other articles your wife appropriated & which are
well known
to you, must be sent, without a day's delay. Two lawyers and myself, have just been together and their list, coincides with my own & will be published in a few days. Trust not to the belief, that Mrs Edward's tongue, has not been
rancorous
against you all winter & she has maintained to the very last, that you dared not venture into her house & our presence. Send me my laces, my diamonds, my jewelry—My unmade silks, white lace dress—double lace shawl and flounce, lace scarf—2 blk lace shawls—one blk lace deep flounce, white lace sets 1/2 yd in width and eleven yards in length. I am now in constant receipt of letters, from my friends denouncing you in the bitterest terms, six letters from prominent,
respectable
, Chicago people such as you do not associate with. No John Forsythe's & such scamps, including Scamman. As to Mr. Harlan—you are not worthy to wipe the dust, from his feet. Two prominent clergy men have written me, since I saw you—and mention in their letters, that they think it advisable to offer up prayers for you in Church, on account of your wickedness against me and High Heaven. In reference to Chicago you have the enemies, & I chance to have the friends there. Send me all that I have written for, you have tried your game of robbery long enough. On yesterday, I received two telegrams from prominent Eastern lawyers. You have injured yourself, not me, by your wicked conduct.

Mrs. A. Lincoln

My engravings too send me. M. L. Send me Whittier Pope, Agnes Strickland's Queens of England, other books, you have of mine—

In 1881, one year before her death, Mary Todd Lincoln was visited by her son, Robert, who had just become Secretary of War under President James Garfield.

T
HOMAS
E
DISON TO
T
HOMAS
E
DISON,
J
R.