A
PUCKISH SAGE
by L. Barry Barrington
Delivered to the
March 16, 1998
Copyright (c) 1998 by L. F. Barry Barrington
In
one of the several reality films that replay inside my mind, one cinematic
classic displays street scenes of
A number of immiscible thoughts: (war/ peace/ hate/ love/ flood/ drought/
Hitler/ Bonhoeffer, for example) such thoughts co-mingled, running through my
mind, although I was not walking alone. A young woman, a fellow student who
called me her best friend, moved along beside me; Jessica and I were discussing
the future. We paused at a traffic light and thereupon, we were overtaken by a
gent in tweed who politely edged into our conversation, as I turned to smile at
him over my left shoulder.
Tipping his hat, he asked if he recognized me from attendance at a recent
meeting of the 20th Century Club, adding, "and weren't we discussing the
causes of war, young man?"
Of course, we had discussed war as well as its causes, because such thoughts
occupied and pre-occupied our minds, dominating our minds after the Fall of
France in June 1940, and the disaster at
Our companion in that sidewalk chat, a panelist at the earlier meeting of the
20th Centurions, had been associated with issues concerning war and peace and
other conflicts of words and swords since he returned to
He had introduced himself to the readership of the Gazette in 1895 as the NEW
editor -with the stated hope "to live here until he is the OLD editor,
until some of the visions which rise before him as he dreams shall have come
true."..... Then he signed his name. White, he was often called; "The
Editor"; and once, the candidate for Governor of the
This paper will act as a carrier of imagined conversations that reflect his
work and strong opinion. In the 1920s White set examples for future libel-law
cases into type in the Gazette, to wit:
"I would not want you to forget the legacy of Frank Munsey, that old NY
newspaperman who died almost 20 years ago," our 1942 retrospective
continues with his tongue. "I splashed crepe all over him in my mocking
epitaph of December 1925, as follows:.
"Munsey contributed to journalism the talents of a meat packer, the morals
of a money-changer, and the manners of an undertaker. Munsey and his
kind," I warned, "they have stained a once-noble profession. May he
rust in trust. I recall also that he left most of his $20-million fortune to
the enlargement of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He helped establish my
belief in a law-abiding populace, where we can enjoy both the wisdom and the
folly of the people."
"That was good copy," I cheer, clapping lightly.
"Oh for goodness sakes, don't clap," he seems to scold, walking away.
"He'll be back tomorrow," says a make-believe passer-by, in sympathy
with my situation.
At the meeting of the 20th Century Club identified earlier, I -- an upstart
college student from the High Plains -- had asked for panelists' opinions about
the causes of war. I asked because the gent at the stoplight had been writing
about such matters for years, and my friend and I both knew that fact. My
composition teacher, Professor Everett Rich, had just completed White's
biography, a work but barely finished before bombs dropped at
As my invented memory of our contacts and visits expands, each of us quite
naturally learns to anticipate the other's experiences and preferences. That
leads me to initiate certain recitals the Sage might have wished he could have
avoided. Among those was my imagined query about another famous journalist, a
critic assigned to the
"Sir," I begin my inquiry on an earlier morning, in 1942, "Sir,
I am struck by the absence of comments about H. L. Mencken in your writings;
likewise, I find no reference to your writings among the recorded works of
Mencken. How is that?"
"Of course I do not know why he would overlook the richness of my
prose," White virtually replies, with a knowing grin. "How could he
not sense the cogency of my logic or the correctness of my views?? As for my
failure to cite his works, I have so little free time any more, and he has
already saluted his own banner. Rather well, he recognized his fellow citizens,
saying of Americans that we are `the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish,
ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in
Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages.' Well, that suggests he has
almost outdone Methuselah, for it has been more that 500 years since the end of
the Middle Ages, according to my office handbooks. It further suggests to me
that Mister Mencken is too pungent for
"Oh," I remark, "I guess you would prefer to write about men and
women whom you admire, right?"
"Not necessarily," our Sage replies, "and I suspect you may want
me to comment on our current
"But, Sir, that was in 1928, if I am correct," I interject.
"Your date is correct, as you know, Young Man, but I suspect that their
list of super-patriots still includes those idle, apoplectic old gentlemen in
red flannels who escape the boredom of their rich wives by sitting in club
windows in
" -- and I take it that you are not a supporter of the Klan, either,"
I tease.
"That flock of dragons, cyclopses, kleagles and cross-burners!" he
storms, in my fancy. "Their shenanigans pushed me into a confrontation
with the Governor of Kansas in 1922. He placed me under arrest on a matter of
my free speech defense. I had to address that too, in an editorial where I
scolded the Gov'nor with something like `we need free expression of the wisdom
of the people -- and, alas, also their folly. Folly will die of starvation, and
wisdom will survive', I think I said... That's true, Lad."
Then, his cheeks reddening, our Editor raises himself to leave and smiles,
flicking the air with his thumb against his index finger. "Office."
he whispers loudly, confiding his destination... He turns to wave, waddling away
from our imaginary visit at the bench on the corner.
But the man's writings -- though often models of first-class libel, it seemed
-- White's writings were not limited to critical remarks about adversaries. He
fostered his fame with two editorials that exhort and inspire as few such
writings have.
* * * * * *
In February 1897 -- one hundred-and-one years ago last month, a train pulling
into a Chicago Station from Kansas carries the Sunflower State's most promising
young editor. He is already carving a reputation as a Puckish Sage, and had
been invited to meet with some of Chicago's writers.
At about twilight on that February evening, another of our literary forebears
might be found huffing easterly along west Jackson Street, near Union Station.
He huffs the steam of his breath into the face of his woman companion, whom he
informs: "We are being followed, but it is only one person, I
believe." Chuff, Chuff, Chuff, the steps behind them approach ever closer,
as they pull aside on the walkway, to permit the person to pass.
"My My My!" exclaims the lady, "this man certainly seems in a
determined hurry!" ...
She is interrupted by an imagined call from the man passing them on the walk:
"Say there, excuse me, but can one of you give me some directions?"
"Well, certainly, Sir, we can help You," says our
Huffer-Puffer-SnowShuffler. "What brings you there? Or, if you'd prefer,
I'll ask `what brings you here?' ."
"Oh, I'm to meet with some writers at a club. Also, meeting my friend
Chauncey Williams of Way and Williams; know them? Chauncey met me at the
station but had to go on, giving me general directions on getting there, where
I am to join another acquaintance: Hamlin Garland, know him?"
"Yes, we know him; them, all of them -- all of the above. I am George Ade,
Sir... My, My, You insert yourself into rather noble society into your
travels!... Where You from?"
"Emporia... Emporia Kansas, two whoops and a holler west of Kansas City,
if you know that route. Er, I write... We certainly know your name out there,
Mister Ade... however, a faulty memory has obscured my recollection of what you
are famous for."
"Yes, Yes, that often happens, I am personally very forgettable, but
outrageously funny -- right, Beautiful Lady?" Ade, the huffing humorist,
responds, as his companion nods and laughs lightly. Ade then continues,
"We vacationed in buffalo-hunting country west of Kansas City some time
back, and we found some inspirations for our writings."
"I do not know what seeds of humor you might have found among the great
bison, but I do know that the darkness hides the details of your faces... I
believe we may have once met," says the traveler from Emporia, adding,
"I grew up east of Wichita in the sparsely settled Flint Hills --"
"Oh, George, we know that part of the American Desert," inserts his
companion, whipping away some dust on the stranger's black coat, "and
perhaps we should ask if you are married and what you have written ---- "
"Do you mean `written lately' ? I am always writing, as I am the editor of
our Gazette, and Yes, I am recently married, I am, to lovely Sallie," he
remarks.
They pause together...Everyone sizes up everyone else, in the context of the
new and fancied gathering. After a moment, the traveler tips his hat to the
pair, honoring the labeled `beautiful lady', and he starts to move on toward
his announced meetings with Garland and company. Just as he comes even with
them, the lady's escort juts out a hand to stop him, with "Y'know, you
didn't tell us your name, but I wonder if you aren't the editor who just last
year helped McKinley win it by writing an editorial called, let's see,
hmmmm..."
"Permit me," the Emporian asks: "Before I rush on ahead... Yes,
I am the notorious one, who wrote the editorial: `What's the Matter with
Kansas'. Oh, I suppose I would have written something like it even if I hadn't
been way-laid by those Populists that day. When I finally broke free, I stalked
(as well as a fat man who toddles can stalk!) down the street to the office.
After I dropped the mail on a desk, I sat down and wrote the next Monday's
editorial, much in this form: `What's the Matter with Kansas?.. Today, the
Kansas Department of Agriculture sent out a statement which indicates that
Kansas has gained less than two thousand people in the past year... So many
people have left the State that the natural increase is cut down to two
thousand net. This has been going on for eight years.
`... Kansas has apparently been a plague spot, and in the very garden of the
world, has lost population by ten thousands every year.
` No one brings money into Kansas any more. Yet the nation has grown rich;
other states have increased in population and wealth. Missouri has gained over
two million; Nebraska has gained in wealth and population; Colorado has gained
in every way, while Kansas has gone downhill and lost in every way since 1888.
`What's the matter with Kansas? There is no substantial city in the state. Take
up the government blue book and you will see that Kansas is virtually off the
map. Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Missouri -- the whole west is ahead of
Kansas... Take it by any standard you please, Kansas is not in it... She has
traded places with Arkansas and Timbuctoo.
`What's the matter with Kansas? We all know, yet here we are at it again. We
have an old mossback Jacksonian who snorts and howls because there is a bathtub
in the State House; we are running that old jay for Governor. We have another
shabby, wild-eyed, rattle-brained fanatic running for Chief Justice... Oh, This
is a state to be proud of! We are a people who can hold up our heads! What we
need is not more money, but less capital, fewer brains ... ! And let's keep the
old clodhoppers who know it all...
`What's the matter with Kansas? Nothing under the shining sun. She has started to
raise hell, and she seems to have an over production. But that doesn't matter.
Kansas never did believe in diversified crops. Kansas is all right. There is
absolutely nothing wrong with Kansas...'
"There I ended it... I slammed the editorial above the copy spike with a
passionate satisfaction and -- late that afternoon, gathered up a book or two,
some magazines and took the train for Colorado, to lay my treasures before my
lady love, Sallie, my bride of a year. And that was that."
Whereupon, Editor White takes off for his appointment, waving broadly to the
wise-cracking George Ade and his companion...
I have to claim that I overhear that recital about his editorial, and having
done so, I claim to capture him again; this time, on Commercial Street in Emporia.
As time went on, his fictional participation in conversations with me also goes
on and on. Listen:
At one such imagined encounter, I hear myself saying, "I am astounded by
the rather sudden change in your outlook on economic policy, once you shook
hands with Theodore Roosevelt, and -- "
"Yes," the Sage allowed, "I guess I reversed some of my
positions, such as thinking that we could heal the underdog by making wholesome
dog biscuits, mere treatment of the symptoms. Yes, I can change my position on
the economy, but never my thoughts in honor of Kansas, my native state,"
he says.
"Yes, Sir," I say, "You spoke well of Kansas and continue to do
so. I, too, speak of her, our native state, with these lines, just written...:
I hope you have a moment to hear my tribute to our Jayhawk home... I see your
nod, so let me paste a few lines into our conversation with a little poetic
praise of Kansas, pausing briefly:
`Once,
For forty minutes,
She did exactly as she pleased.
A shower had just ended,
The pressing heat had eased;
Her gardens bloomed; the piglets slept,
Warm and freshly fed;
Eagles circled overhead;
Love perfumed her sunflower bed;
Dust had settled; wheat bins stood full--
Surplus to the local mill;
So Kansas lay her golden head on the Rockies sloping hill;
To rest? No chance! Nebraska called:
That dear old friend feared fungal rust would kill her tasseled corn;
Missouri grabbed the party line:
Her floods were back again! Colorado's foothills limped;
She, of course, suspected some esoteric thorn;
And, of course, Oklahoma!
Oklahoma crowed about red soil and native tribes
Who had danced to bring a rain.
Then, Kansas spoke in gentle tones
Of changes through the years --
Paging through the ages with new brands of pioneers:
Companions for tomorrow and future mystery hunts."
"Pretty good, Lad... don't you agree, Young Lady?" And the young
lady, Jessica, smiles and nods as our Sage friend moves on, waving his
departure. After he leaves, I volunteer, "Do you want to know how he
answered me last year? He said `Wars -- all wars, have their roots in economic
injustice'."
"Sounds likely, to me," she muses, smiling. As I recall, she adds
"Didn't he have a delightful, elf-like manner?"
I snort aloud, "Why, he must be more than 70 years old!"
"I hope!" she says, "I don't favor a man being so sage and so
puckish at an earlier age."
Stick around; it is tempting to dwell on the puckishness of our posthumously
honored guest.
White grew up in Eldorado, a small town of SouthCentral Kansas. From his boyhood,
he could recall parades, wherein at least one veteran of the War of 1812
stumble-marched to the drums. Some of those honored were survivors of the
campaign in Mexico in the late 1840s, but Civil War Soldiers dominated the
celebrations on Decoration Day. He said he admired his uncle, his mother's
brother in uniform for the time he spent in the Union Army, who was then
preparing to head west to fight tribal Indian warriors.
For the next imaginary meeting and visit, I go alone, arriving at the corner to
find him waiting. I follow up his `Hello' immediately with my nosiness about
his view of the future:
"What will we be doing tomorrow? and in the years after the war
ends?" I ask.
"Oh, I don't think of such matters until my alarm clock goes off," he
says, adding "you should learn: the future will be here soon enough. I
learned that fact of fate back in 1893. when I chose not to worry over my
firing by the Kansas City Star. As you may not know, I was re-hired two days
later, after the other editorial writer had a disabling stroke; such is
fortune, Lad."
"I would have You know that we often think of You and your family, since
we pass your home weekly going to and coming from Sacred Heart Church, but more
especially --"
"More especially, What?" he inquires, "Romance in wartime?"
"Yes, I suppose, yes, Jessica today, but that will change..."
"How do you know it will change? Is she pledged to another young
man?"
"True," I say, "We don't know about the man she will meet when
I've gone off to Fort Leavenworth. I shall leave Emporia to you and the special
recruits for the Army's new program, assuming that the recruits will mix with
and pursue the College co-eds here. Later, I may meet someone in the military
or in some village choir overseas or on the country roads I tread: My father
favors Rose A. for me; my uncle urges me to chase Marilyn U. . I will leave it
somewhat to chance... As a certified hayseed farm boy, don't I have to?"
"No! Absolutely not..." He retorts. want to tell me what really stirs
and bothers you so?"
Now I blush... I have not really thought this matter through,but I try to
answer him, taking a make-believe stage as if I were in theater:
`Sir, What will the winds of tomorrow bring?
How will I know what songs to sing?
What form will war most likely take?
Can love truly soothe, while making me shake?'
Here, he once more cuts me off, but he supplements my thought: "Love's
qualities, more especially, our love for our children -- my daughter, Mary.
Ahh, Yes," he puts in, and looks away...
"Mary White, as I noted in my editorial after her funeral, she was a
special bright princess for the community, eh?"
"Yes, Mister White," I agree, "Several of us have taken the form
of that eulogy and, indeed, its text, as model rhetoric; as recitation. You must
know that... After all, some such students sit in class only a mile away from
the office where You wrote it..."
"... And only less than 500 feet from where she was riding when the
accident occurred," he puts in. "Shall I tell You about Mary White?
Bear with me. Can we sit over there on the bench in the shade? I am not as
strong as I used to be, mind You, and it will take some strength to go over
those sorrowful events of 22 years ago. As you may have heard, I returned
hurriedly from Atlantic City. Edna Ferber took on the sad duty of informing me
of Mary's death when she met my train in Chicago; then I rode the Santa Fe on a
long, agonizing journey home."
I find it good to anticipate hearing him, Mary's father, go over the matter in
the most candidly touching form I can imagine... We sit in my imagination,
shaded by plantings at the corner of 7th and Commercial, and he more or less
recites his own words, which go much as follows from the Gazette of the 17th of
May, 1921:
`The Associated Press reports carrying the news of Mary White's death declared
that it came as the result of a fall from a horse. How she would have hooted at
that!! She never fell from a horse in her life... and she could ride anything
that had four legs and hair... [A] blow on the head fractured her skull, and
the blow came from the limb of an overhanging tree.
`The last hour of her life was typical of its happiness.... As she rode through
town on an easy gallop, she waved at passersby; ... she walked the horse along
the front of the Normal School Library, then turned north on Merchant Street,
removing her cowboy hat, then waving it at the Triplett family as she passed
and pushed the horse into a lope.
`She made a mistake, and waved at a High School boy friend with her bridle
hand. The horse veered suddenly, plunging into the parkway toward a low hanging
limb. While she looked back, waving, the blow came. She did not FALL (!) from
the horse; she was NOT riding fast, as she had a year or so ago. She now used
the horse to get into the open, to get fresh, hard exercise, and to work off
surplus energy that needed an outlet.
`But the riding gave her more than a body: it released a gay and hardy soul.
With widened horizons, she was the happiest thing in the world. She came to
know all sorts and conditions of mankind: the traffic cop was one of her best
friends. Holtz, the Latin teacher, another. And all the girls -- black and
white -- above and below the track, in Pepville and Stringtown, were among her
acquaintances. She loved to frolic, and her humor was a continual bubble of
joy. She was mischievous without malice, as full of faults as an old shoe. No
angel was Mary White, but she never nursed a grouch five minutes.
`Yet, with all her eagerness for the out-of-doors, she loved books. She read
Twain, Dickens and Kipling before she was ten -- all of their writings; and she
was entered as a student in Wellesley for the following year.
`She never had a "party" in all her nearly seventeen years --
wouldn't have one, but she never drove a block that she didn't fill the car
with pick-ups! Everybody rode with Mary White -- white and black, old and
young, rich and poor, men and women...
`Her zests were keen, but the most fun she ever had was acting as chairman of
the turkey dinner event for the county home poor folks: scores of pies, gallons
of slaw, jam, cakes, preserves, oranges, and wilderness of turkey were loaded
into the car.'
[White pauses here, to add "Perhaps she was reflecting my mother's concern
for equity; Mother, born Mary Ann Hatten, had defied her school board in
Council Grove, Kansas, when she taught there in 1865 and 1866 and demanded the
admission of colored children to the so-called white school there. Mary would
have cheered that, as I do." He swallows, clears his throat, and goes on:]
`... the very last endeavor of her life was to try to get a rest room for the
colored girls at the High School, when she found one girl reading in the
toilet, because there was no other such place for a colored girl. Accordingly,
she became a nagging harpy to those who she thought could remedy the evil.
`Her funeral yesterday at the Congregational Church was as she would have
wished it; no singing; no flowers except the red roses from the Gazette and
from her brother Bill's Harvard classmen, roses head, side and foot. A short
prayer; Saint Paul's beautiful essay on "Love" from the 13th Chapter
of First Corinthians; some remarks by her friend, John Rice, Pastor and police
judge. And opening the service the slow poignant movement from Beethoven's Moonlight
Sonata, which she loved, and closing -- the Lord's Prayer by her friends at the
High School. That was all.
`For her pallbearers, only her friends were chosen, among them, her Latin
teacher, her principal, her doctor, and her brother Bill.
`A rift in the clouds in a gray day threw a shaft of sunlight upon her coffin
as her energetic little body slowly sank to its last sleep. I know that the
soul of her -- the glowing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, was already flaming
in eager joy upon some other dawn...'
The next time I fancy waylaying him at my favorite shady stop on Commercial
Street, I challenge him with: "Presidents... You have known several
Presidents, right? Would You name tell me about them?"
"That will take more than one gathering, since my interaction with them,
each and all, went beyond knowing them, Lad... That included McKinley, TR --
Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.
"My first `client President-to-be' was William McKinley. I was assigned by
the KC Star to be their ambassador on the train that carried the future
candidate -- all gussied up in a white vest and double-breasted Prince Albert
coat -- McKinley on an inaccessible throne in the observation doling out his
short greeting to locals. At 11 am, in Emporia, I filed a 3000-word story about
my observations, but the telegrapher mislaid it and it did not arrive at the
Star offices until 6 pm, already a stale story. Its tardy arrival made a near
disaster for me as a young editorial writer.
"The press sat on racks and boxes in the baggage car. We pounded out our
copy as the train chugged across Kansas. We took note of McKinley's remarks at
each of the short stops at Lawrence, Topeka, and on through the afternoon to
Hutchinson..."
"Sir, I was born in Hutchinson, as matter of fact," I insert into the
tale.
"Ohh!" he goes on, "in Hutchinson, McKinley spoke in the evening
at the -- ah-h Your FairGrounds Agricultural Hall. In his remarks, hardly
hidden, if I do say so, McKinley showed the results of practicing to be slick;
he combined the virtues of the serpent, the shark and the cooing dove -- with a
little too much of the cooing dove. He shook hands with precisely the lack of
intimacy that deceived men into thinking well of him. Weighing out his
saccharine in just the correct dosage, he turned his smooth fat face to the
various statesmen who called on him -- the dose that cheers but does not
inebriate."
"My goodness!" I exclaim, as an imagined small crowd gathers around.
"He was elected President, wasn't he? I'm glad we don't have his kind any
more..."
"Well, You will, You will, Lad," he says, rising from the bench,
tipping his soft hat and returning to his stroll. Then, suddenly, he turns,
"Let me repeat what I told my Wharton audience in Philadelphia five years
ago, when I spoke of my `fear of intrusive interests on the press, that class
consciousness is discrediting the press of the world; that organized control of
the press, [and here I would add, radio and related media], organized control
of opinion by ... advisors may constitute a major threat to a free
press'."
As we part, I begin to ruminate on the path he had followed to come back to
Emporia; I recall that his physician father had left Emporia (`too crowded',
he'd said, in about 1870, when the population approached 800), and the family
moved away to then-tiny Eldorado, where they remained until about five years
after his father's death. He returned to the College of Emporia and then on to
the University of Kansas... During those years, the Whites answered the call
they felt to be leading citizens, and -- on one occasion, he recalls: "We
hosted Susan B. Anthony, since both of my parents were outraged by the failure
of the nation to grant suffrage. They strongly championed the cause."
On the occasion of our next meeting at the shaded corner of 8th and Commercial
Streets, I begin with a sharp query to the Sage: "You left the Kansas City
Star to buy the Gazette with your own savings, right?"
"Not quite correct, Lad", he says, "With my mother's property as
security, and all I could borrow, plus Sallie's savings, I made ready to leave
the Star -- after all, they had already fired me once! It was time to head out
on my own; when it was settled, I took off alone with my ticket and a dollar
and a quarter.
"Arriving in Emporia, I took a hack to my boarding house, and paid the
hackman a quarter... You are one of a very few who knows that I had only a
dollar remaining. Well! When I then displayed a certain foppish air, the
boarding house crowd was nicely impressed... Take note: A good front is rather
to be chosen than great riches."
"But Sir," I insist, "Your experiences with powerful men of
wealth must have spurred you to gain treasures for yourself, Right?"
"Not for myself, but for Sallie and my children, yes, and I had some luck
with that goal-- more fortune yet, would I have gathered if I had distorted our
moral vision and taken gold shares offered me in 1905."
"I guess I did not know about that incident, Sir... Ahh", I stammer,
waiting for the old news that had never come to my attention.
"You will recall the late Senator William Borah," White says,
"Borah, who died some time ago after several terms in office? Borah was an
old friend, never more so than when he reminded me of the fraud we would commit
if my associates and I continued to convey to our gain the use of Federal land
for gold mines and fruit trees. It was at best legally questionable. I
announced finally that I was ashamed of what I was about to do and that I could
have been such a sucker. I narrowly escaped disgrace, if you must know."
"And then ... ?" I turn to him, squinting in the bright morning sun.
"Then," he answers, "I stayed with investment in Emporia, became
a true booster, to the point of keeping ads of Kansas City stores and mail
order houses out of the Gazette, and crusading for honest dealings, against
railroad passes and other marks of privilege."
"I never heard about those good works, Sir," I gush.
"Don't gush, Lad," he snaps, jumping up from the bench and hopping up
to greet someone he knew better than he knew me, whom he now abandons at that
corner where we had by default, made many of my imagined connections.
Looking back to me he `TaTa-s' me and heads for his office on Merchant Street
and I head for Spanish class...
On still another occasion, I salute him as he approaches, then wait for him to
find his place at our bench there at Sixth and Commercial. As he looks up and
shoots that characteristic grin at me, I begin to inquire about his other
presidential encounters. He is only too willing to pick up on Teddy Roosevelt,
Wm. Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Warren Gamaliel (`Gamaliel' meaning God's
reward!, maybe the reward was that he didn't have to complete his term, dying
on travel, as he did) -- Warren Gamaliel Harding, and Woodrow Wilson -- all of
whom he had known.
In a succession of bench reflections, we set up a mirror for each of them, the
mirror being the sage's memory. It is usually a clear vision, with insights on
character. "In my case," White recalls, "whenever I met with Roosevelt,
I always tried to speak in the same form as that which frame my written words:
to meander between blackmail and begging the client. The road between begging
and blackmail requires that the builder to know a great deal about himself and
the client. Otherwise, I fear the intrusion of wealthy interests, which will
distort justice and also discredit the press..."
One day, he begins with: "When I spoke earlier about Mary White, I
mentioned her even-handed treatment of whites and blacks, and I hope that her
mother and I can take some credit for her fairness. I have always felt that
Fortune favored Roosevelt, the First, letting him serve beside colored troops
at the Battle of Santiago, giving him some time to reflect on fairness and
humanity before he became president...
"My regard for him is not an unmixed admiration. TR rushed to judge the
Spanish regency of Queen Maria Cristina in the case of the Battleship Maine. On
the day following its destruction in Havana harbor in February 1898 he
exclaimed: `it was an act of dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards.' I
doubt that that was the case, and I further doubt that we shall ever know the
specific cause of that explosion, which took 266 of her crew to their deaths,
leading to Mister Hearst's urgent cry in the New York Journal: "Remember
the Maine; to Hell with Spain'."
"Of course, the US won that war," he says, "And I do not wish my
country to engage in any losing war, but I hope our future leaders are less
headstrong, with honest memories..."
I ask, "Are you thinking of something specific in that connection?"
and the Sage replies: "Yes, I am still concerned for the slander Roosevelt
laid on the great humanitarian, Jane Addams.. Hull House's Jane Addams had
seconded Theodore Roosevelt at our Progressive Party convention in 1912, and
yet TR showed his intolerance for pacifists, by lumping them all under her
name, as he fulminated: `Poor bleeding Jane Addamses!' It was my deep pitying
sadness then for him who could so soon forget."
"As for Presidents Hoover and Coolidge, I supported both of them: For
Coolidge, as you may know, I wrote a biography :: A Puritan in Babylon, which
informs you about my feelings for both the Innocent Cal and Washington DC; for
Hoover, well he had so little spirit. For both -- they received the honor of
ships named for them, ships that met a more sorry end than their namesakes: the
President Hoover ran aground six years ago along Formosa, and was a total loss.
The President Coolidge suffered a fate far worse in terms of the official navy:
being pressed into service as a troop carrier just after we declared war this
time, the Coolidge's merchant marine captain ran into one of our own mines off
Guadalcanal last year, and sank along the New Hebrides. Well."
He switches back to Hoover with "I regarded Hoover as the greatest
innocent bystander in history, a man who refused to help the population
emotionalize their thinking, who did not tell stories, as our current Franklin
Roosevelt does, liberally sprinkling them with his version of the alphabet.
AAA, SEC, WPA, PWA, and NIRA, N-I-R-A, for the National Industrial Recovery
Act..."
The Sage clears his throat and smiles, then resumes his own tale since he
appears to want to repeat the point of the failure of those programs like NIRA,
which, he says, recalled the epitaph for Epaminondas, the thirsty dog that
belonged to Bill Nye, the humorist. The dog had gobbled off a bellyful of
plaster of Paris from a repairman's mixing board. When Epaminondas died after
the plaster hardened, Bill Nye wrote these soulful words: `Here lies
Epaminondas, interior view, He bit off more than he could chew.' I cannot
resist coloring our chat with a bit of ego, saying: `We had a cat named NIRA,
for she did her part, my father said, some eight years back, when she died in
1935.' The Sage smiles and we part for our duties of the day.
That February morning was the last time I spoke to William Allen White, the
Sage from Emporia. I was inducted at Fort Leavenworth on March 11, 1943, and
returned to that corner bench only once more. Our Puckish Editor was not
present on that day; he developed a fatal sickness in the fall of that year,
and died in his native Emporia on the 83rd Anniversary of Kansas' Statehood, on
Saturday, the 29th of January, 1944.
The grand old man who had never received his degree, but had served seven years
on the Board of Regents of the University of Kansas; who had never held
elective office, but whose unsuccessful candidacy had blocked the election of a
Klansman as governor; who successfully served as chair of a Neutrality
Committee in 1940 and as chair of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the
Allies in 1941 -- Editor and Owner of the "Emporia Gazette", that
Puckish Sage had left his mark on newspapering in America -- a heritage that
Emporia still enjoys through the Gazette's current editor, his granddaughter,
Barbara White Walker, who regretfully declined our invitation to her to be here
tonight; in that correspondence, she noted her own father's ribbing of her
granddad, labeling him 'the Sage with gravy on his vest'. If today's plans
hold, Emporia will see a fourth generation in place when his great grandson
takes the Gazette on into the 21st Century. Thus, the saga of this Puckish
Sage...
We began this evening with an awkward awareness of our subject's puckishness.
It is pleasant to leave it with two related insights into his personality.
First, I am told by a member of the family that intimate occasions included
mutual spoofs, one of which observed sharply that `the Sage should button his
fly'; and Secondly, from his own hand in his Autobiography, wherein the Puckish
Sage warns the reader, " not to confuse this story with reality. For God
only knows the truth." He was but trying `to set down some facts that seem
real.' So have I.
Thank You.
##
* * *
(Drawing
on Jay Jernigan's 1983 "William Allen White", on WAW's "The
Autobiography of William Allen White", Sally Foreman Griffith's 1989
"Home Town News", and the works and tales of my 1941-42 Composition
Professor, Everett Rich, as well as my July 1997 conversations with Mary Bogan,
a most helpful reference librarian at Emporia State University, where I had
been a student and library custodian in the Summer of 1942; all of these, plus
a helpful note from White's granddaughter, Barbara White Walker, and my own
fragile, extended, elastic, pliant and flexible memory of brief meetings with
the Sage. LFBB: March 1998).
NOTE: Copy of the front page of the Gazette for August 20, 1896, containing
"What's the Matter with Kansas?" given to attendees.
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