Killing Lincoln

[richard petersen]

(02-15-2013 11:29 AM)Linda Anderson Wrote:  According to her diary, just before Powell's attack Fanny was reading "Legends of Charlemagne" to her father. She noticed that "he seemed inclined to sleep" so she turned down the gas.

Earlier in the day, Fanny had been reading "Enoch Arden" by Tennyson to Seward. It was a popular poem that describes a man who was shipwrecked who returns to his wife only to find that she is happily remarried.

"In the 1940 screwball comedy film My Favorite Wife, the character Ellen Wagstaff Arden (Irene Dunne) is a comic inversion of Enoch Arden. She returns from the sea and boldly reclaims her husband and children. Cary Grant's character in the film is called "Nicky Arden." A remake called Something's Got to Give starring Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin, and directed by George Cukor, was partly filmed in 1962 before being stopped due to Monroe's studio management problems and her subsequent death, but was shot and released the following year as Move Over, Darling, with Doris Day and James Garner."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Arden...ar_culture

I don't know the source for Stanton delivering the fruit. That Friday was the first day that Seward took solid foods since his carriage accident on April 5 so it seems appropriate.

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Thanks