Discoveries in Jones Hall-- the perspective of Margaret Woodrow Wilson
Letter authors represented include Edith Wilson, Jessie Wilson Sayre, Ray Stannard Baker, Francis B. Sayre, and President Wilson's daughter, Margaret Woodrow Wilson (1886-1944). Most notable are the early 1940s letters written by Margaret from Pondicherry, India, where she lived at the religious community, Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In one of these letters to Lucy and Mary Smith, she philosophically reflects on memories of New Orleans, racial issues, and World War II, sending love and spiritual inspiration back to America.
Sri Aurobindo Asram Pondicherry
India.
Precious, precious Smithies,
How
could I have let so long a time go by without sending you even a line! You see, I am the same old procrastinator as
ever! Sometimes I wonder how much it is
possible to improve in one life when I see all my faults sticking to me like
flies! For a long time it was indeed
excusable on my part to put off my correspondence for I was sick for many months
and recuperating for many more but all that is long past and still I let days
and months go by without writing to those I love in America. But, darlings, I do love you and there are
still so many vivid memories of you and our life together that float into my
mind like beautiful iridescent birds across this tropical blue sky. The other day I saw a flock of intensely
green parakeets fly in formation like aeroplanes across the bluest of blue
skies and my heart actually stopped beating for a moment so startling was that
flash of beauty. Well, pictures of you
and all of us together in Virginia, in Princeton, in The White House, flash
across my “inward eye” in just such a way, making past joy alive again in one
breathless moment. In fact past joy is
not ever really past and gone, is it?
Isn’t it there at all times within us, forming part of the richness of
our present life, part of the pattern that Nature weaves within our
consciousness to please the Spirit within her?
This
town still recalls New Orleans to me often and, of course, you with it. This combination of old France and India is
fascinating—I never tire of it and hate to see the new apartment houses going
up. I look at the bare-footed peasant women,
walking so straight with their brass water pots on their heads and feast my eyes,
knowing full well that I am gazing on forms of beauty that must pass. All the Hindu women still insist on wearing
their saris, at least here they do, even to do physical labour in and I am told
that in Northern India the women play tennis and very well in their long
saris! I wear a sari in the evenings,
and a lovely evening dress it makes, but I wear my little short American
dresses in the daytime, feeling very awkward in comparison to the graceful
Hindu women but a darn sight more comfortable and cooler. The Hindu women, who are the results of
marriage with the French, wear European costumes and lose thereby all their
distinctive charm—or is it because they are not one thing or the other that
they seem so awkward. We call them
Creoles here but the French resent that name being used for the metisses, as I
think they call them, because they say Creole means only someone of another
nationality born in a foreign country or born in a family that was originally
born on foreign soil. Is that the
distinction made in New Orleans? I
thought there the term was used to describe the mixture between French and
Spaniard or French and American in New Orleans.
Perhaps the sensitiveness here on that point is due to the sense of
superiority on the part of the whites over the coloured races, even the
wonderful Hindu race, just as the New Orleans people resent the term being used
in connection with those who have Negro and French blood in them. I am surprised that is is so here for the
French have always intermarried with the natives of their colonies without
losing caste. Here it seems they do if
they marry Hindus. Isn’t it
extraordinary that the White people can keep that sense of superiority in the
face of such a superior race as is the Hindu race? Why, in some ways they are much, much superior
to us! I feel in their presence that I
and my people are crude, as is something new and half baked in the presence of
mellowness and age long refinement.
Their culture goes so much deeper than ours. In fact in their presence I hesitate to call
our America culture, culture at all. You
remember Mother used to say that American culture was skin deep compared with
English culture? Well, it is only as
deep as the first thin layer of skin compared to the culture of Asia,
especially that of India. And if you
could see a lot of these people you would not find it possible to believe the
fiction that they are a decadent nation.
Their present state is certainly not equal to their ancient but the
culture and the intelligence that created ancient India is still here, deep in
their consciousness, and in those who have half a chance at a decent education
it flowers out, as of old. It is now
very evidently a renascent nation and as such will play a very great part in
the future of this world that this terrible war is clearing the way for.
It
is horrible, is it not, to see another world war and a far worse one than the
last, but if we have faith in a Divine Purpose we must believe that it will be
fulfilled and that even war and destruction can prepare the souls of men for a
next step upward in our spiritual development.
But what faith it does demand of us to see so much that is beautiful and
from our point of view worthy of preservation, even important to the future of
mankind such as the gifts of youth extinguished in colossal slaughter and
destruction. If we did not believe in
the immortality of man and the Universality and Omnipresence of God we could
not bear such a spectacle without despairing of the future of the world, could
we?
Dear,
dear ones, I hope and pray that you are both well now and that your faith gives
you inner peace in the midst of all this suffering. I believe it does, for is is so strong and
pure, so selfless. I do not know of
anyone about whom I feel more at peace than about you because I know your faith
and what an ever present refuge it is for you.
As I love our Presbyterian benediction I shall utter it now as a prayer
for you both—“May the Lord cause His Face to shine upon you and give you Peace.”
I
love, love you both with a deep and tender love
Devotedly
yours, Margaret
October 23rd 1942.
My favorite memory of you is of the three of you sitting
together, Mother and Cousin Lucy sewing, and Cousin Mary reading aloud, in a
warm sunny room in winter …. under this in summer. M.W.
Caption: three-page 1942 letter by Margaret Wilson to Lucy and Mary Smith, Manuscripts Collection 519, Box 1, folder 3, Lucy and Mary Smith letters from the Woodrow Wilson family. Images of items held in the Louisiana Research Collection may not be re-published without permission.
Posted by Susanna Powers
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