A Springtime Story for the Lincolns

I once I heard a diplomat on the world stage remark to an audience that observers often took issue with his smiling countenance, especially during times of crisis. The diplomat disclosed that he tended to smile often, and then said:

“I must learn to not smile so much.”

This reminded me so much of Lincoln, and will allow me the chance to tell a story or two, for April 14th is the memory day of the death of Lincoln, serious as it is. I want to write about it and see what it means today.

***

Lincoln never saw San Francisco, but had he lived he would’ve visited. How do I know? He said so, on his last day, April 14, 1865. He spoke with a California congressman, and the subject of the visit came up. Lincoln said “You are going to California, I hear. How I would rejoice to make that trip!- but public duties chain me down here and I can only envy you its pleasures.”

I like to think of Mr Lincoln laughing at our hills and crazy weather and the little gold-dust tornadoes that supposedly appear spontaneously here and there. It is easy to imagine Lincoln here, to imagine remarks about tying the nation together by a visit to California; or a story about the old woman and a mule called Progress; or delightfully surreal descriptions of earthquakes, and old jokes that would be obvious and still funny with each retelling. As the Lincolns clip-clop by horse-car or carriage down Market Street or up Montgomery, they would be amazed at the diversity of the inhabitants. How Mary would’ve loved San Francisco! They would dine at the Cliff House by the sea, and there’s no question that Lincoln would’ve loved the drastic melancholy and drama of the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps he would turn to Mary and say, “Look at all that water!” And Mary would give him the Look.

***

You know, George W Bush is not far from from that kind of remark, and would know keenly the criticism directed at Lincoln. I have to give it to to the president; Mr Bush too, has had a hand in creating his own folklore, and will probably be remembered for his folksy, unadorned style- deservedly so.

There is no question that Lincoln would be delighted with the famous Bush malaprop, “They have misunderestimated me!” and would add it to his stock of stories.

Lincoln paid an emotional price, and a potentially political one, after the battle of Antietam, when he failed to effect a gravity of expression, and asked to hear a tune as he left the battlefield. This was considered a horrid lapse of taste, and was used by his enemies for a long time thereafter.

He was lambasted continually, for the story spread widely and it grieved him- he smiled too much.

***

When he told jokes at cabinet meetings he was met with looks of stone silence, but despite this he was always ready with a story. Some were annoyed, but friends who loved him saw the dour expression and twinkle and knew that a good story was a-comin’. Sometimes he would make everyone wait and stare at him for a long moment before he began.

A final photograph of Lincoln is a little fortuitous miracle, for in it he shows us the now famous Mona Lisa-like smile of recognition near the war’s end. A miracle, for the photographic plate was broken and would’ve been thrown away. But here he greets us, and communes with future Americans in a friendly and honest way.

It’s a great mystery for historians, that smile.

For Lincoln’s face was impossible to photograph. The animation and amusement returned only after the picture was taken, and that, perhaps, is the perfect element of humor, the utter gravity of that face. Lincoln no doubt would say it broke the negative.

Consider this description of him laughing, that his face crinkled up, he grabbed his knees and stomped his feet and nodded and nearly cried tears at a good story. Stone cold sober, Lincoln kept the other lawyers up late nights laughing.

-And he wrote the Gettysburg Address.

***

That people make a demand of propriety which is not always possible to fulfill, is a truism for George W Bush as it was for his great predecessor. As Bush slings a few nicknames at reporters, sometimes Lincoln would leave statesmen standing while he would unlimber and chat with a newsboy; elbows out, hands clasped behind his head, long extended. Stretched out- forever.

***

So my California dream, Civil War style, is based upon a sunny afternoon conversation with Lincoln on his last day on earth.

Good Friday. Glorious nation at peace. I think Lincoln pulled lemons off the tree for a visitor. The usual conversations were all brief, friendly, and subdued. Lincoln looked happy. Think opulent sunshine, blue sky, green grass and roses. Dogwood in bloom. Spring and peace filled the atmosphere at the White House. And at night, illuminations all over the city, brighter than the stars. I think he worked a half day, and went for a carriage ride with Mary. It was such a beautiful spring day.

And then there was horror that night I won’t retell it but it not mention that Lincoln’s son Tad, age 12, was also at the theater, but Tad was at Grover’s not at Ford’s with his parents. He was seeing the play “Aladdin” when he heard of the shooting. When it was announced to the stunned public that his father had been shot, Tad was seen alone, “running from the theater like a deer.”

Running from the theater like a deer…

Lincoln, Mary and Tad. Gone long since, 138 years or so.

***

I have a newspaper clipping in one of my Lincoln books from many decades ago. It has yelllowed with age.

In it, a reporter wrote about his grandmother’s memory of Lincoln lying in state in New York. She was there, a young woman then. I think the reporter was a boy at the time of the interview with his grandma, with a homework assignment on History.

The young reporter asked, “How did Mr. Lincoln look?”

And his grandma replied, “Well, he didn’t look too good.”

That was not a sufficient report, so his grandmother went on to describe the marble pallor, the slight smile, the black suit from the second inaugural, and then, how at the funeral pageant she and her girlfriend nearly got in trouble for giggling and flirting with a handsome soldier- he startled the girls into seriousness with a grand wave of his sword in the direction of the coffin. Grandma explained that he was saying: “Mind your manners, and think of Mr Lincoln.”

Just so: Mind your manners and think of Mr Lincoln. And don’t smile too much.

***

Honest Abe did not lie undisturbed. Grave robbers made an attempt in 1876, and officials had the body moved several times until an occasion in 1901, when Lincoln’s face in death was last seen, at a little private ceremony. Before a final interment, in a newly constructed secure vault, an aperture was made in the coffin through which the little assembly could peer and take a last look at Lincoln.

Mildew had settled, but the hawk nose, little tie and inaugural suit were recognized. In a fully Industrial Age he had helped to create, Lincoln was lowered into a cage of iron and concrete ten feet down in the ground in Illinois. This morbidly fascinating event scared the youngest witness, who said. “I didn’t sleep well for a good long time after that!” The lifetime of that witness overlapped mine, I learned. Lincoln’s direct family line too, was gone by the mid-nineteen fifties.

***

So Lincoln thenceforth rested undisturbed- except by the writers who keep prying open the whole episode again? Why? What’s this all about, this remembrance?

I look at a lithograph of the scene at Ford’s Theater, April 14, 1865, and notice the box from which the assassin leapt; the footlights on the stage below, the American flags draped here and there; it is truly a star-spangled tableau. Its melodrama is highlighted by the art of the print. Flags and bunting and even a framed picture of George Washington adorn the scene.

How we paint everything in red white and blue! We create our silent tributes and tableaux. How beautiful they are. Below the televised war (Iraq) is the banner of freedom, framing the tv screen, the commercial for ourselves. It colors everything we do. The flag is waving, the band is playing, the drums rolling. On we go.

But the morning after the assassination there was no pageantry at all, just the little hearse rolling back to the White House in the rain. An escort of only ten soldiers. And Mary Lincoln ever after, in the old hotel with the shades permanently drawn.

And the doctors in the upper room at the White House that morning found the bullet that changed history. It dropped into the basin with a dull ping.

While we rewrite history to suit ourselves, we still confront its sad realities sometime.

***

Let me return to the present for now.

This week, in April 2003, President and Mrs Bush visited wounded veterans and spoke briefly to the nation. One of the hospitalized soldiers was on life support- “wired up”, according to President Bush’s awkward description…and it reminded me of the time Mr Lincoln, spontaneously shedding a tear at the side of a wounded young officer said, “Please live, don’t die- you must not die!”

-To which the young officer replied, “I don’t intend to, sir.”

I wonder if Mr Bush knows this story. I get the feeling he would really enjoy it. There is a sense of humor in George W Bush which is quite in keeping with this tale.

The little scene with the President and Mrs Bush at the hospital reminded me of the days in history when the Lincolns invented these roles, and they too were astonished at the courage reflected back at them by the combat veterans they visited. The Lincolns visited the wounded as often as possible, to comfort them, and to rejuvenate themselves. It seemed to be an activity they truly enjoyed.

It makes sense that the Lincolns would draw near us during wartime, would care for the soldiers, and would care for the nation now. Lincoln would bring strength, much needed diplomacy, and as for Mrs Lincoln, it would be her utmost anxiety to inspire the people with courage.

Lately I have been looking for a way to forgive, to feel inspired again, and perhaps to acknowledge and remember Mr Lincoln is a way to feel that, and also to regain a sense of union, perhaps just for this day, perhaps just for this moment.

And in doing so here, I have probably rewritten history the way I want it to be. That is fine. For me, then, it is a day in spring, the war is winding down- and the Lincolns are bound for California.

jk

April 15, 2003

postscript: I just read quite by accident that Lincoln was once caught by Mary using a gold fork to feed the cat. To her stern look, he replied,

“Well, if it’s good enough for President Buchanan, it’s good enough for Tabby.”

***

Hey, Lincoln wrote about Niagara in 1848, notes of ideas for a lecture. Unlike my silly made-up anecdote, here the writer’s voice is clear:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:6?rgn=div1;view=fulltext