Robert Todd Lincoln --The vitals

[kerry]

(01-21-2018 02:29 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Kerry,

For the past three or four years now I have done detailed studies of Ida Tarbell's work on Abraham Lincoln for a book I hope to get finished before I end up joining the choir invisible. In addition to studying Tarbell's Allegheny College papers I have studied her papers in several other archival institutions, along with detailed conversations with Kathleen Brady, author of the only full-length biography of Tarbell. I would like to clear up some things in your posting.

Quote:Ida Tarbell's work is mostly good. She worked to get to the bottom of things. But even her Springfield stuff is iffy

If by "iffy" you mean incorrect, I have to heartily disagree with your characterization. Tarbell was a very careful researcher throughout her life as was her Springfield researcher, J. McCan Davis. Indeed, Davis found so many things that changed public perception on Lincoln that he received author's credit on the first book Tarbell wrote on Lincoln, which was a collection of her McClure's Magazine articles reprinted.

However, if by "iffy" you mean confusing, then I can go along with that. Tarbell at times was led astray by her sources and in a few instances by her own belief in what she was presented with. The two best examples I can offer for that would be her writing on Lincoln's "Lost Speech" in Bloomington and her initial acceptance of the Wilma Minor letters. She went to her grave believing that Henry Clay Whitney had provided the closest thing to a detailed account of what Lincoln had said in 1858. As for Minor, she let her own desire that Lincoln and Ann Rutledge be in love cloud her judgment.

Your book sounds very interesting! I meant that what she was told by her sources was iffy, not that she herself didn't vet it. I agree she was a very careful researcher.

Quote:Again, I can't agree with that. In the first place, Tarbell wrote as much as she felt necessary about Mary. Much of her hesitation before 1926 in what she wrote came from her desire not to upset Robert Todd Lincoln, whose donation of the first known picture of Abraham was the frontispiece for the first McClure's article. Because he gave that picture, it brought the initial series much more publicity,

Tarbell did not like Mary. She said so in numerous letters and she felt that with RTL still living her dislike for Mary would come through even in what most would recognize as a benign comment. It should tell you something that Tarbell waited until after RTL died in 1926 before she accepted an offer from Ladies Home Journal to write a two-part series on Mary, which the magazine published in February and March of 1928.

Even before then, however, Tarbell often considered writing, even in a glancing way, about Mary. In the early 1920s, Tarbell was asked by William Briggs, editor of Harper's, to look over the manuscript for Orville Hickman Browning's diary to see whether or not it would make sense for the company to publish it. The Browning heirs made it a condition for negotiations that information about Mary that Browning wrote would have to be left out. In a memo Tarbell wrote to herself on April 29, 1921, she mentioned talking with Briggs about that. "Discussed whether or not the material in regard to Mrs. Lincoln should be used. Told him I want as soon as Robert Lincoln is dead to write a sketch, that it doesn't seem to be quite nice..." Unfortunately, the next page that completes that thought is lost from Tarbell's papers. But even that short paragraph shows that Tarbell was hesitant to write anything as long as RTL was still alive.

As an aside, Harper's never published anything as the Browning heirs sold the diary to the state of Illinois, which published in the diary in two volumes minus the Mary material. That material wasn't published until Michael Burlingame did so some years ago.

As for the barrel stave story, Tarbell used it in a story she wrote for Good Housekeeping in February 1929 called "Lincoln and the Youth of Illinois" and the reason it didn't appear in book form after that was due to its insignificance to the entire Lincoln story. In my own research on Tarbell I've come up with about 15 or 20 stand-alone articles that could be written that are of interest yet tell little about my subject at hand. Tarbell used it to illustrate the story only.

Best
Rob

Yeah, I've read her correspondence about not liking Mary or wanting to upset Robert, and wanting to write more once he was dead. I guess I disagree that she didn't think more was necessary - she seemed to be actively avoiding dealing with it, both because of the negative nature and concern about Robert and because she couldn't get a great picture of Mary. When it comes to the Lincoln family, which is what I've spent the most time researching, the Springfield sources just don't seem to amount to a clear picture, even a negative one. Her Washington sources (Williamson, Browning & French descendants, Bucktails) offered more information. I just find it interesting that none of the Springfield sources had much information about Lincoln's family significant enough to make the book.

On November 3, 1927, she wrote to Mrs. Clifford Ireland “As I see it, dear Mrs. Ireland, the main point in regard to Mary Lincoln is to gather a substantial body of material which will counteract the effect that her unfortunate hysterical public exhibits of herself had upon the public mind during the War and in the years immediately following . . . The whole story is very painful to me. As time goes on and we get more and more information concerning her life, I think people who were very severe with her may come to a kinder view, at least I hope so . . ."

It seems like she thought more information was out there, but that she hadn't gotten it from her sources. And when she did write about Mary, she relied heavily on Rankin, right? It seems like Rankin was the only one who could give firsthand commentary on Lincoln's Springfield family life, instead of just repeating local gossip. Burlingame has since suggested he was lying -- I know he doesn't like Mary Lincoln so that is convenient, but I get the sense Rankin was writing himself into the story. I don't blame Tarbell for trusting him, given the connections he had to Springfield, but it doesn't seem she ever had much to work with from the Springfield years. I think it is interesting she didn't focus more on her Washington-era interviews if she wanted to present a new side of Mary -- more of those stories were corroborated, with multiple members of Company K attesting to the same thing.