Tarbell

[Rob Wick]

Received Mike's gracious gift today and immediately read it. Here is my critique.

In his introduction to the journal, Thomas Horrocks makes the understandable mistake of saying that Tarbell was "the first woman to write a major biography of the sixteenth president." That honor actually goes to Phebe Ann Hanaford, who published a biography of Lincoln shortly after his assassination. While generally forgotten today, as David Mearns noted, at the time of its publication, it was a bestseller.

One other nitpicking point. The footnotes provided do not follow the numbering in the text, although that is a minor irritation, and likely the result of an editorial error.

Overall, this really isn't a deep dive into the life of Lincoln, but rather how Tarbell was selected by S.S. McClure and how she was less-than-thrilled to accept the assignment because it took her further away from her true love, Paris and the French people. As she began to search the Kentucky and Illinois sites (Tarbell avoided Indiana, preferring to let a researcher hired by McClure by the name of Anna O' Flynn run down various leads), she realized that there was something in the search that she enjoyed and soon dedicated much of her working life to studying Lincoln. As one of my signatures says, Tarbell often said, "Abraham Lincoln is the only man, dead or alive, with whom I could have spent five years without one hour of boredom."

I really don't have any serious arguments with what Lynn has written, but it barely scratches the surface of Tarbell's lifelong fascination with Lincoln. It seems to me that while she consulted all the major secondary works available, she didn't do much in the Tarbell papers, which are digitized and easily available online. While she mentions Robert Todd Lincoln's giving to Tarbell the earliest known photo of his father, she doesn't note that one reason Lincoln gave her the photo was to influence what Tarbell wrote. As Lincoln wrote to John Hay on November 19, 1895, apologizing for not providing Hay and John Nicolay the photo, he added, "I had it photographed for Miss Tarbell, the McClure Agent, as I wanted to put her under a little obligation to me and if her letters since are anything I have succeeded."

At the end of her chapter (the article is taken from Lynn's Loving Lincoln: A Personal History of Women Who Shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy (Southern Illinois University Press, 2025)), she reveals what I think is her main point in writing about Tarbell, placing her story among Ida's. "As a voracious reader who loves a good story, however, I have read Ida Tarbell's Life of Abraham Lincoln multiple times over the years. It never loses its vivid light, and, in fact, I enjoy it more every time I return to it."

Later, Lynn writes, "Bohemian women in all eras always have their male detractors (on a personal note, I think it's interesting that Lynn didn't quote Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine, who sneered after hearing Tarbell was writing a biography of Lincoln that "McClure got a girl to write a life of Lincoln."). But Tarbell's Abraham Lincoln mattered and still matters, and her faith in herself to define Lincoln on her terms gives me faith to define Lincoln on my own." While somewhat overstating it by writing, "Ida M. Tarbell is my Lincoln storytelling superhero," a description that Tarbell would have bristled at, one cannot fault Lynn for her admiration. It was an interesting article and I appreciate Mike's making me aware of it and then sending it to me.

I do want to add something concerning David's inclusion of Judith Rice's article on Lincoln, which came from her doctoral dissertation from the University of Illinois. In reading over her dissertation, Rice makes it appear that Tarbell corresponded with Frederick Jackson Turner, who approached Lincoln via academia while Tarbell took the popular route. While I am not accusing Rice of anything improper, there is no evidence that the pair ever corresponded. I have looked through every collection of Tarbell's papers (even ones that have only one or two letters), and there are no letters to her or from her to Turner. I wrote the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, where Turner's papers are located, and they show no record of letters to or from Tarbell. Twice I have contacted Rice to question her comment. She has not responded. Again, I'm not accusing her of anything, but to make such a claim with no available evidence is suspicious.

Best
Rob