Ray Stannard Baker to Cary T. Grayson

Title

Ray Stannard Baker to Cary T. Grayson

Creator

Baker, Ray Stannard, 1870-1946

Identifier

WWP16606

Date

1926 March 1

Description

Ray Stannard Baker thanks Cary Grayson for speaking with him in reference to the biography he is writing about Woodrow Wilson.

Source

Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

Language

English

Text

Dear Admiral

I came back to Amherst with the most satisfactory recollection of our conversation. It helped me greatly not only in understanding certain facts regarding Mr. Wilson’s life, but, more important still, certain characteristics. At the same time, I am in considerable trouble as a result of giving close thought to these all-important conversations with you which I have been trying to put into orderly form.

With the exception of Mrs. Wilson, no one was personally closer to the President in those later years than you were. This makes every word you say of prime importance, and I cannot but feel the responsibility of having it soundly backed from an historical point of view.

What I am worried about is this. Suppose I quote passages that will certainly cause discussion and perhaps controversy from these memoranda of my conversations with you in a work which will be considered authoritative by students, and suppose later when you publish your own diaries and notes, there shall appear to be discrepancies between the two narratives? We shall both be under fire, and both of us doubted; and to this extent do a disservice to Mr. Wilson’s memory. You will see the problem at a glance. Our stories must hang together! -- or we will hang separately!

Now the diary written at the time, even though it is scrappy and incomplete, is a better authority, historically, than the same story told afterwards from memory, for memory tricks us. I don’t know, of course, what form your notes are in, or how complete a record you may have kept, and it may be that you feel the same shrinking that I do from letting anyone else see the hasty and fragmentary notes of a diary -- and yet I thought I ought to raise the question whether it would not be better for us both in view of your cordial willingness to help me, to let me see your actual records, and, wherever possible, base anything I may have to say upon the bedrock of that historical authority. When you give me the added material from memory which I know you have stored up, and which I have found so interesting, I can work that out in memoranda of conversations, just as I am doing now. You can then read over this material and initial it so that I can refer to it as a secondary authority. This seems to be the only solid and safe historical method for doing so important a work. By this process, our accounts will agree and no student in the future can get around them or behind them and make us look foolish.

With the immense number of letters and documents in Mr. Wilson’s files, it is not likely that I could in any event use much of your actual material -- certainly not enough to hurt it for your subsequent publication -- and I should of course put in no part of it that you did not think ought to go in. Several other people have given me all their records upon this basis, although they are not, of course, within a world of being as important as yours. Indeed, I think the references in the biography to your intimate diary would whet the appetite for the full publication when you were ready for it.

I have been especially struck with these considerations since my last talk with you -- since I have been getting down to solid work on the material -- and I have felt that I should indeed be a poor biographer, not worthy of your confidence (and I owe you more than I can ever repay!), let alone that of Woodrow Wilson, if I did not put the whole matter before you honestly and frankly.

I wish you’d think it over and write as frankly to me as I have to you. In that way we shall get at a sound and practical plan for doing what we both want to do -- have our hearts set upon doing in the highest and best possible way -- that is, interpret truly the life of Woodrow Wilson.

I hope you had a fine trip to Florida. I found, after I got home to the drifts and the ice and the slush of New England, that I had moments when I envied you! It was a great satisfaction and pleasure to me to have visited you in your beautiful home.

Cordially yours,

Ray Stannard Baker

Original Format

Letter

To

Grayson, Cary T. (Cary Travers), 1878-1938

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/D04059.pdf

Citation

Baker, Ray Stannard, 1870-1946, “Ray Stannard Baker to Cary T. Grayson,” 1926 March 1, WWP16606, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.