Lincoln's Melancholy

[Rob Wick]

In 1894 Ida Tarbell was in Springfield doing research for her McClure's Magazine articles. She went into Roland Diller's drug store to get something to drink and escape the brutal summer heat. She struck up a conversation with Diller, and she soon found one of her greatest sources for "human" stories about Lincoln. In her interview notes, she notes Diller's comment in discussing Lincoln's love of telling jokes and stories “He had to do that cause he was melancholic like. He had shadows over him. We used to say when we saw him broodin’ ‘What’s the use Abe? Nothing ain’t your fault. What’s the use?’ but he couldn’t help it.”

When Tarbell modeled her character Billy Brown after Diller in her He Knew Lincoln and Other Billy Brown Stories (which was her best-selling book, selling in 1909 alone 17,000 copies), she omitted Diller's talk of Lincoln's melancholy. While one might think she did that in order to save Lincoln's reputation from gossip, she also took out Diller's positive comments about Mary Todd Lincoln. From an earlier draft of my original book on Tarbell and Lincoln, I write the following:

In both the published article and the subsequent book, nowhere is Mary Lincoln’s name mentioned. Given Tarbell’s general dislike of Mary, and her knowledge that Robert did not like to see his mother’s name in print even in stories that were favorable, that is not surprising. By the time Tarbell published He Knew Lincoln, Diller had been dead for two years, so it was impossible for him to point out Tarbell’s omission. Would he have done so? It seems likely, given that in another interview, Diller told Tarbell he was “a Mrs. Lincoln man” saying she was a good neighbor. “Of course she had a temper,” Diller told Tarbell. “The Todds all had a crazy streak. My wife says we all have a crazy streak and I guess she’s right. You have haven’t you?

I quote this to point out that Diller was trying to tell Tarbell truthful information about Lincoln. Even though Diller was a Democrat, he had a great deal of affection for Lincoln. They were close friends. That Tarbell chose to leave Diller's comments about Lincoln's melancholy out of her writing cannot be seen as a question mark on the information's veracity.

There is no question that Diller was a character (he constantly flirted with Tarbell, calling her "Tarbucket") but if you look through the notes that she gathered regarding him, they correspond with what others have said about Lincoln. There are too many stories of Lincoln's melancholic nature for it not to have a basis in fact.

Best
Rob