Columbia Library columns (v.9(1959Nov-1960May))

(New York :  Friends of the Columbia Libraries.  )

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  v.9,no.2(1960:Feb): Page 35  



John Dewey's Letters to Corinne Chisholm Frost      3 5

to understand the meaning of his long sentences and words un¬
familiar to me. To my surprise Mr. Dewey replied immediately
and asked me to write again.

This was the beginning of a correspondence which lasted until
after Mr. Dewey's ninetieth birthday anniversary. In May, 1930,
he told me that he was retiring from teaching at the end of the
year. I was to be married in October, making my home in New
Orleans, and I expected to have time for reading and writing. My
letters to iMr. Dewey were the only avenue of communication
open to me on this level of discourse. His letters to me indulged
his need to experiment with ideas he wanted to simplify on the
path to intellectual unity. I asked Dr. Dewey in a moment of
trepidation if the statements I would release in his name would be
charged with over-simplification. He replied that when profes¬
sional philosophers have spent years in acquiring knowledge of
complexities—and shifting the load from time to time so they may
bear it more comfortably—they do not readily part with it for
something simple and clear.

The content of the letters will interest Dewey's biographers.
They were written from Nova Scotia while on vacation there in
summer or from Key West in winter; from a steamship en route
to Europe where he was to receive an honorary degree from the
University of Paris; from a train on the way to Chicago to attend
the funeral of an old friend, George .Mead; just after a trip to
Mexico where he had presided at the Trotzky trial; from a ranch
in .Missouri while \'isiting one of his daughters; afrer 1947, from
his wife's country home in A\'estern Pennsylvania or from a Cana¬
dian river steamship with his wife and adopted children; from
hospitals, occasionally; before and after symposia and birthday
anniversary banquets in New York City. Mr. Dewey's interests
were legion and I am sure his letters to me were an almost invisible
thread in the rich tapestry of his life and thought.

For me, as for Mr. Dewey, the continuing correspondence was
a single strand among countless others. What a fabulous weaving
  v.9,no.2(1960:Feb): Page 35