by Norman Lock
“How about a little glass?” he asked, a lighted pipe clamped between his teeth.
“Fine,” I said, since I was safe from Ruth’s reproachful eye. She was a teetotaler to spite her father, who was a sot. Contrariety can rule our lives as often as does destiny.
“And none of Mary’s port, either! Damn her highfalutin ways!”
He poured us each a glass of liquor, whose burnished light entranced me.
“No better drink was ever concocted by the sons of Adam than rye whiskey.” Raising his glass, he said, “To your good health, Robert.”
“Long life,” I replied. What irony there was in that wish, poor devil!
“Your wife seems a good sort,” he said, the picture of a man at ease. He would not always be so.
“She is, but I’m afraid she might have offended Mary.”
“Pay no attention to Mary! She is never so happy as when she has something to carp about. We get along well together, because I promised myself to keep her happy at all costs.”
I gazed through the amber in my glass at the poplar trees, the lawn, and at Abe himself, who pulled a long face, as though he were sitting for a daguerreotypist, whose subjects always seem to frown.
“The world is better viewed through rye-colored glasses,” said Abe.
You have a homely face, I thought. Like Thoreau’s. Both of you, however, have virtues more important than a prepossessing countenance.
We sipped awhile in that silence known to men for whom tobacco and strong drink are enough.
“Are you looking forward to fatherhood?” he asked. His expression had become serious.
Was he thinking of his son Edward, whose death must still have been an unsalved wound in his mind—so large a mind that it needed his lofty brow to contain it? I knew that Abe’s grief was immense; all his passions were. His reluctance to speak of them kept them raw.
Am I looking forward to fatherhood? I asked myself.
“Yes,” I replied, after a hesitation, which he caught in the fine web of his perceptiveness.
“You’re not the first man to worry over newfound responsibilities.”
He pulled off one of his Congress Gaiters and scratched a toe through a sock fretted with a strand of darning wool, which took me back to Amherst and the wooden egg.
“I’m not worried.”
Abe talked about his law practice and his political aspirations. He wanted to return to Washington, where he had served a term in the House until, losing his seat in 1849, he returned home to Springfield. He drawled on, pausing to tamp down his tobacco and sip his whiskey. He appeared to be speaking into his lap—he wasn’t looking at me—and I was free to drift through a haze of smoke back to Amherst and my youth.
Emily, do you recall the summer day we met? I haven’t thought of it in years.
–5–
I HAD WALKED TO AMHERST ACADEMY to borrow a book from Mr. Fiske, who was acquainted with my aunt. His library of works on American history was said to be comprehensive, and I hoped to find de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and to read it before returning to the seminary in the fall. He had volume one, which he gladly lent me, and, after a pleasant chat regarding my studies, I left him to resume his writing of an essay on “Mad Anthony” Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
You were sitting on a bench outside North College, with a book opened on your lap. You had just taken off your bonnet to pin up a loose strand of hair, and I was struck by its coppery fineness, which seemed to catch fire in the sun. Before you could put your bonnet on again, I had seen your face clearly. At first, I thought it odd, even droll, but as my gaze lingered on it—stayed by curiosity—I saw that I’d been mistaken. Freckled and fair, your face was enlivened by hazel eyes, which, if too widely spaced for the classical ideal, enchanted me. I watched them go into eclipse beneath your bonnet’s brim.
I approached you with diffidence and an overweening brashness—an uneasy combination frequently encountered in shy young men.
“What is that book you’re reading?” I asked, doffing my hat like a gentleman.
Instantly, I regretted my forwardness, and I was prepared to put my hat back on my head, nod pleasantly, and walk away as fast as I could.
“Almira Hart Lincoln’s Familiar Lectures on Botany,” you said, unconcerned by my presumptuousness or the flush that I felt spreading warmly across my face. “She teaches at the seminary for young ladies in Troy, New York. She is very keen on plants.”
“And do you like them very much?”
“Why, yes, I do,” you replied seriously, “especially those that could not possibly take root in New England soil.”
Neither of us could have known it then, but you were describing the misbegotten woman you would prove, in time, to be.
“What flower is this?” I asked, pointing to an engraving in the book resting on your lap.
“That is the Alpinia—kingdom, Plantae; division, Magnoliophyta; class, Liliopsida; order, Zingiberales. ‘A showy and fragrant inflorescence ranging from light pinks to deep reds. Alpinia is indigenous to Malaya,’ which, I have on good authority, is as far away from Amherst as heaven is.”
You waved a gloved hand over the illustration and its gloss and said whimsically, “Of course, this is not the Alpinia, but only words and pictures. Miss Lincoln’s book is gospel, but one must search elsewhere for the living truth.”
You sat there musing and sucking your bottom lip. “Shall I tell you a secret?”
“What is it?” I asked, preparing to be perplexed.
“I am coming to prefer words to things. What book is that you have under your arm?”
“De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, volume one. May I sit down a moment? I’m feeling faint. I went out this morning without having eaten my breakfast.”
You knew I was shamming; nevertheless, you made room for me on the bench—an audacity that would have shocked Miss Almira Hart Lincoln, shy, in Troy, amid her African violets.
“Thank you, Miss——”
“Miss Dickinson, resident of this town and a scholar, if an indifferent one, of this school, which, I wish you to know, sir, was founded by my grandfather, along with old Noah Webster.”
My countenance expressed an appropriate veneration for your ancestor, but my interest was all in that strange face of yours. None would have called it “beautiful,” but I was beguiled.
“I am Robert Winter, a student at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg and also a resident of this town.”
“I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Winter,” you replied, smoothing out the rumples in your skirt.
“Do you like history, Miss Dickinson?”
“I would like it more if it had not already come to pass,” you replied wryly.
“History is time’s fallen petals pressed between the pages of a book.” The witticism rightfully belonged to Josiah Quincy, uttered in an uncharacteristically fanciful mood.
“I dare say you are right, but I’m of the opinion that time, being no less fleeting than impatiens or snapdragons, is unreliable and unsatisfactory. I prefer the amaranth, which is said to be immortal.”
I must have appeared bewildered, because you went on to explain in that quaint way of yours, “Poetry is always fresh, except for verses penned by certain lady poets, whose sweetness turns cloudy, like honey exposed to fresh air. And languages, even dead ones, live on—in Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Horace’s Odes, for instance. There is also music, whose charms never fade, and pictures to look at painted ages ago that one can enjoy as if the paint had not yet dried. Even arithmetic, which I believe to be the most tyrannical subject in the curriculum, is useful when one is saving to buy a hat. But history, Mr. Winter? Fie on it! It’s dry as dust, and those who teach it are old sticks!”
I felt overwhelmed, like a dory at sea, knocked about by waves.
“Do you believe in democracy?” I asked, tapping on the cover of de Tocqueville’s book.
“In that I am an American, I do be
lieve in it. But I will tell you frankly, Mr. Winter—if you can stand so much candor in one day—my house is a petty monarchy where Father holds sway. When I left the house this morning, he was polishing his orb.”
You were peculiar but, at the same time, sensible. I knew I could be no match for you in a battle of wits, never mind that I’d immersed myself in Boyd’s Elements of Rhetoric and Literary Composition. But I could not get over my first impression: You were enchanting in your own mercurial way—an elfin being (you called yourself a “gnome”)—frank, endearing, and lacking in conceit. You were a young woman worthy of my pursuit and conquest.
Forgive the words—they hardly proved apposite, but desire is as unavoidable in a young man as whiskers.
You looked at me as though your eyes were plumb bobs sounding to my very depths. I may have shivered to find myself suddenly exposed.
“You needn’t fear, Mr. Winter. I shan’t bite you. I am too like the tender and toothless animal that lives inside a nautilus shell.”
You smiled, and I grew even fonder of your countenance. It would not have launched a thousand ships. I doubted it would have launched a waterman’s skiff, but it had the power to draw me to you and to hold me in tow. Then a strange thing happened: I became persuaded that I had every right to possess you because I alone could appreciate the comeliness of your features. And by one of infatuation’s paradoxes, the more I was convinced that no other young man would waste a second glance at you, the more desirable you became in my eyes.
“Will you permit me to show you the town?” I asked fatuously.
Who knew then that you would be anchored all your days to that provincial town? You are thirty-four years old, Emily, and, excepting visits to Boston for your eyes, you’ve stayed put, like the porcupine that turned into a cactus. I suspect Carlo was more widely traveled than you.
“I have seen it,” you replied archly. “You are very bold, Mr. Winter!”
“I beg your pardon.”
You were enjoying my discomfiture.
“If you would like us to be further acquainted, you must visit me at home in the usual way of a courtship. Do you mean to court me, Mr. Winter? I fear I am terribly young. But if you feel that you must, our house is the grandest one on North Pleasant Street. Father would have it no other way, even if we are straitened. We must, you know, maintain our ‘prestige,’ which I’m sure I do not care a Christmas cracker about.”
I offered you my hand, which you took—albeit reluctantly—and I helped you to your feet with what I judged to be a grown-up chivalry. With the sun suddenly in your eyes, you frowned, and your freckles faded in a blush of color on your cheeks.
“I will visit you tomorrow.”
“Not tomorrow,” you said. “Come on Thursday, when my father will be in Boston. He is not fond of novelties.”
“Will your mother be at home?”
“Certainly!” you snapped, as though I’d insinuated an impropriety.
“And is she fond of novelties?” I asked as innocently as I could.
“Not overly so, but she is not readily put out of countenance, either. Father could have glowered Oliver Cromwell into bashfulness. Yes, Mr. Winter, you must come and visit me on Thursday, when I shan’t have to whisper.”
–6–
Ssssssnuff!
In another moment, I had been whisked from Amherst back to Springfield by a snort and snuffle that had originated in Abe Lincoln’s nose. It was enough to awaken him from his after-dinner nap.
“Did that rude noise belong to me?” he asked, shrugging back into consciousness.
“It did,” I replied with a laugh.
“It sounded like a train. I must’ve been dreaming of the Celestial Railroad and its glib conductor Mr. Smooth-It-Away. I know a good many of his sort. They would compromise their own mothers to appease the slavers.”
He stretched and yawned, scratched his ear, and swept tobacco shreds from his lap.
“Mary will have much to carp about tonight. It should make her very happy.”
“We should be going,” I said, rising from my chair.
Abe drew a gold watch from his pocket.
“Gone on nine o’clock. The ladies will be getting agitated.”
He snapped the lid shut and, with a weary sigh, heaved himself upright.
We went into the parlor, where Mary was regaling Ruth with stories of her “finishing” at Madame Mantelle’s school and her erstwhile position in the Lexington, Kentucky, aristocracy. She was nattering cheerfully, but she seemed to me like a barefoot dancer mincing over broken glass or a fakir smiling on a bed of nails. Her effusions sounded hollow at the core.
Later that night, I asked Ruth, “Did Mary talk about little Edward?”
“No, but in her mind, I’m sure he was with us. She would sometimes stare into a corner of the room and groan.”
In my mind, I repeated the words of Saint Matthew, concerning Herod’s murder of the infants, “. . . Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” Then I said aloud, “Abe worries that she will not give up her grieving for the boy.”
“It’s been a year and more,” replied Ruth, a stolid German girl, whose philosophy was not to dwell on things that can’t be changed.
“What do you think of Abe?”
“He seems harmless. Mind you, Robert, I’ve had enough of his fables and tall tales to see me into the next life!”
She quenched the candle flame between her fingers and went to bed without another word. The next life would come too soon for both of them, alas.
“Time consumes like a fire as it passes, and history is its ashes.” Was it you who said that? I know of no one else who talks in rhymes.
When Ruth’s time came, she gave birth almost effortlessly, as though the baby could not wait to begin her life. We laughed, relieved that the labor had been easy. Her mother had toiled a full day, followed by a lengthy lying-in.
“It was no harder than scrubbing a floor,” said Ruth as the midwife cleaned the baby.
Charlotte was to be our only child. She brought the house alive, as children will, and kindled an affection between Ruth and me, which had grown tepid. If it was not love I felt, it was as near to love as I will likely get.
I ministered to the soldiers at the fort and preached at the Lutheran church in town. Often, we had guests for Sunday dinner; the Lincolns came on several occasions. Mary wore black, her moods were variable, and her voice would sometimes slide up and down the scale of grief like a Swanee whistle. Ruth was kind now that she, too, was a mother and could imagine a mother’s bereavement. She’d listen to Mary’s reminiscences and fancies, nod encouragingly, and, if they happened to be sitting on the sofa, pat the back of her hand consolingly. I do think Mary’s wits were turned, although Abe spoke more kindly of them as merely being “addled.”
Abe and I would trade stories and our hopes for the future. I knew that his optimism was a pretense, largely for Mary’s benefit. Privately, he brooded. I recall sitting at the window of his office when, looking at the street, he said gloomily and—as it turned out—prophetically, “The Potawatomie followed their Trail of Tears through Springfield. I fear much blood will be shed and our tears will be ample.”
When, at the end of June, Henry Clay, of Kentucky, died, Abe delivered the eulogy. He maintained that destiny had always put forward men that “the age has demanded.” He spoke with prescience about the dangerous times ahead, admonishing the mourners, “Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that, in future national emergencies, He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.”
Increasingly, Abe’s melancholy would overwhelm a genial nature, eclipsing it for days on end, when he seemed a man in deepest shadow. His tales became cautionary, his anecdotes somber, his fables dark; his silences grew lengthier. I would resort to his study and rest in them awhile, pleading the necessity of quiet in order to compose my sermons. Ruth h
ad the patience of a mother and of a person whose nerves are not spun overly fine.
“Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me,” she would scold with the authority of the King James Bible. There were times—God forgive me—when I resented my own child.
You must think me monstrous, Emily, but I have sworn to be honest. Self-revelation is more painful than Saint John’s Apocalypse, which will not come to pass until the end of days.
That reminds me of another of Abe’s fables. He had been reading aloud an account in the newspaper of the execution of Narciso López, who had led an expeditionary force of American, German, and Hungarian mercenaries to liberate Cuba from Spain. Having paused in his reading, Abe pulled at an earlobe.
“Has something put a flea in your ear?” I asked.
He laughed and proceeded to spin a yarn he called “God and the Flea.”
“And when the last human being was finally dead,” Abe concluded, “the flea he’d carried to the end of time hopped off his corpse and straight into God Almighty’s beard.”
Your recent letter, Emily, also concerned itself with the resilient pest.
The Homestead
Amherst
June 4, 1865
Dear Friend,
Lately, I have wondered if the Flea, such as tortured poor Carlo, or Lice, to be more emphatically objectionable, once inhabited Paradise. I mean the Earthly one called Eden, which was let an age ago to negligent Tenants—who allowed the Garden to grow wild. I did not think before that our Parents could possibly have itched—in their unabashed nakedness—from bites received from any outlaw species of Creation. Perhaps there was a Golden Age of Fleas & Men—before the Serpent had its fateful palaver with Eve—when all was peaceable & coexistent. (Lice I cannot abide & trust He would not have put them into circulation, at least before Sodom & Gomorrah.)
In church & Sunday school, vermin were not much discussed, unless it was the Mouse that had moved in behind the vestry wainscoting. Cheese & traps were set out after the Elders refused to give it sanctuary. I considered it against Christian tenets to withhold mercy even to rodents & complained so meekly, I expected to inherit the Earth before the week was out.
