Ray Stannard Baker to Cary T. Grayson

Title

Ray Stannard Baker to Cary T. Grayson

Creator

Baker, Ray Stannard, 1870-1946

Identifier

WWP16589

Date

1925 June 22

Description

Ray Stannard Baker thanks Grayson for his encouragement and agrees to send the bibliography of Wilson’s work that has been identified. He also tells of the volume of the project to compile Wilson’s work and his delight at how many wonderful letters and previously unexposed materials he has received.

Source

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

Language

English

Text

Dear friend Grayson

It was good to see your handwriting. I want to help you in this matter of the bibliography of Wilson’s works and addresses myself. Dodd and I are getting up a complete record to be printed with the collected papers. It is based on studies made at Princeton University but it will contain a large number of additional items. You will find in Volume II of our “Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson” a reference list of all of them up to and including March 4, 1913, when Wilson went into the White House. I will get the Princeton lists for the remaining years and send them to you soon. They are the best to date, and when the other four volumes come out, the record will be much more complete.

You don’t know what a job you helped get me into! While I haven’t had a moment of wanting to turn back, having set my hand to the plow, yet the field looks bigger and the furrows longer as I work into it. You have no idea of the volume of these documents! One of the most gratifying things that has happened to me has been the helpfulness and generosity of Mr. Wilson’s friends. The letters have been coming in from all over the country, some of them most precious and interesting. I had a bundle of material the other day from some friends of Mr. Wilson in England, which develop the story of a charming friendship.

I was in Boston the other day and had a talk with President Eliot. He has turned over to me a fine collection of letters. And last week I was in Princeton, and found there also the greatest spirit of helpfulness. I had had some doubt about being able to get at the records of Princeton University relating to the famous controversy, since no outsider has ever yet seen them. I thought it necessary to have what actually went into the minutes, for nobody can get behind such documents. I took the matter up directly with President Hibben, whose relationships with Mr. Wilson you know well, and found him, to my delight, willing for me to have access to the records. Such men as Dean Fine, and Professors Capps and Conklin, could not do enough.

But I won’t attempt to go into all these matters in a letter. I want to tell you about them when I see you.

I have been on the point of writing you two or three times recently, asking you when you think it would be most convenient all around for us to get together for a real attack upon your own material. I have been so overwhelmed with the work of getting the documents organized and taking care of an avalanche of correspondence, that I have not as yet got to the consideration of such great sources as yours. Moreover, I knew that I could depend upon you at any time. I see by your letter that you have already moved to your new home in Washington. Are you expecting to be there all summer? I am anxious to get a glimpse of what you have done.

The deeper I penetrate into the material I have, the more I am convinced of the importance of your intimate contributions to the story, not only on the side of Mr. Wilson’s health, but in your personal memories. At the same time, I can see clearly that, with the abundance of Mr. Wilson’s own letters, memoranda, and other documentary material, the amount I can actually use of diaries and memoranda such as yours will be relatively small, and the need of a good book by you at a later time will still be great. And I think the references to it and the quotations from you which I would make in this official biography will whet people’s appetites for more. I am sure I should aim to make them have that effect.

Kindly remember me to Mrs. Grayson and those fine boys, and retain a large measure of my respect and affection for yourself.

Cordially yours,

Ray Stannard Baker

Original Format

Letter

To

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

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/D04056.pdf

Citation

Baker, Ray Stannard, 1870-1946, “Ray Stannard Baker to Cary T. Grayson,” 1925 June 22, WWP16589, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.