My dear M. Mistral,—Mrs. Roosevelt and I were equally pleased with the book and the medal, and none the less because for nearly twenty years we have possessed a copy of Mireille. That copy we shall keep for old association’s sake; though this new copy with the personal inscription by you must hereafter occupy the place of honour.
All success to you and your associates! You are teaching the lesson that none need more to learn than we of the West, we of the eager, restless, wealth-seeking nation; the lesson that after a certain not very high level of material well-being has been reached, then the things that really count in life are the things of the spirit. Factories and railways are good up to a certain point; but courage and endurance, love of wife and child, love of home and country, love of lover for sweetheart, love of beauty in man’s work and in nature, love and emulation of daring and of lofty endeavour, the homely workaday virtues and the heroic virtues—these are better still, and if they are lacking no piled-up riches, no roaring, clanging industrialism, no feverish and many-sided activity shall avail either the individual or the nation. I do not undervalue these things of a nation’s body; I only desire that they shall not make us forget that beside the nation’s body there is also the nation’s soul.
Again thanking you, on behalf of both of us,
Believe me
Very faithfully yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.
To M. Frédéric Mistral.
The Nobel Prize has been devoted to the same patriotic cause as that to which the poet has invariably consecrated everything he possesses. In this instance the gift from Sweden has gone towards the purchase of an ancient palace in Arles, which in future will be the Félibréan Museum, the present hired building being far too small for the purpose. The object of the museum is to be for all times a record and storehouse of Provençal history, containing the weapons, costumes, agricultural implements, furniture, documents, &c., dating from the most ancient times up to the present day.
The Memoirs, which Monsieur Mistral defines as “Mes Origines,” end with the publication of his Mireille in the year 1859 at the age of twenty-eight. He adds as a supplement a chapter written some three years later, a souvenir of Alphonse Daudet (also among the prophets), which gives a picture of the way these youthful poet-patriots practised the Gai-Savoir in the spring-time and heyday of their lives.
I have added also a short summary translated from the writings of Monsieur Paul Mariéton, which brings the history of Félibrige and its Capoulié up to the present date.
CONSTANCE ELISABETH MAUD.
Chelsea, June 1907.