In an earlier post, detailing Lincoln’s comments on migration and immunity to disease, I mentioned that journalist Mary Clemmer Ames did not believe malaria existed. When I reviewed my source for that, I noticed that she actually made more or the less the same observations as Lincoln did, and then drew the opposite conclusion from them.
Clemmer was a regular correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial in the 1860s and 1870s. The Commercial seems to have catered to the same “respectable” audience as the Springfield Republican, which meant its impressive political coverage often veered into contrived moralizing. It was what we might today call virtue-signaling, in that its denunciations lacked the sincerity and consistency of those in The Liberator.
Clemmer was a perfect fit for this style of journalism, and was one of the highest paid correspondents at this time, certainly the highest paid female correspondent. In 1877, this piece she did for the Commercial made the national rounds:
Let me whisper in your ear, Commercial, there is just much humbug in this universal cry of "malaria" as there is in Civil Service reform, and that is as much as there can possibly be. The Hon. D. Danker comes from a well-regulated home among the northern hills to suffer for his country in Congress at $8 or thereabouts a day.
Clemmer indicates that the affected congressmen tend to be newcomers to D.C., sheltered natives of rural areas in other (usually northern or western) states. This is exactly the type of person who would be most affected by diseases endemic to D.C.
But Clemmer blamed it all on other factors:
The Hon. D. Danker at home is under tolerable severe domestic discipline. Mrs. Danker has a high nose, which means that she rules and reigns over Mr. Danker. She sees that he is safely tucked away in bed every night by 10 o'clock. She sees that he has oatmeal smother and cream for his breakfast. She takes the Herald of Health, therefore does not fry her beefsteaks, nor goad her lord to hari-kari with cakes soaked in lard. On the whole, the life of the Hon. D. Danker at home is that of a civilized man kept well in tow by a wife with a high nose and "a mind of her own." Woe to the Hon. D. Danker the day he shoots cut from that benevolent apron-string to follow his own devices in the Capitol of his country, he goes on to a committee, sits up all night; smokes three-fourths of the time; lives at a hotel; eats all sorts of indigestible food, at all kinds of unseasonable hours; breathes the bad air of overheated and overcrowded rooms; has next to no exercise; perhaps "takes to drink;" his eyes be come bloodshot, his head heavy, his blood thick, and before the 4th of March his gorged and torpid liver stops, and positively refuses to be moved. Then comes the inevitable item in The Star: "We regret to state that the Hon. D. Danker is prostrated and confined to his room by a severe attack of "malaria." In the opinion of your scribe there is a good deal more of the Hon. D. Danker in Washington than there is "malaria."
No doubt she was correct that a lot of these congressmen made the most of their freedom and suffered for it, and that their general way of life was not conducive to good health. And in the late 1870s, her portrayals of women seem to have gotten much healthier. Now, the ideal wife was one who took good care of her husband’s health, not one who slavishly worshiped him. And such good care required a woman with “a mind of her own,” since it is evident that the husband couldn’t be counted on to make good decisions. Maybe the political atmosphere of the 1870s lowered Clemmer’s opinion of prominent men, and caused her to reevaluate the role of women. But she was wrong about the existence of malaria—she must have been lucky enough to not be very affected by it. She doesn’t even seem to understand the symptoms, the main ones being attacks of headache and fever/chills that spike every few days. Its sudden appearance in March is no surprise, as mosquitos are not active in winter.
In other recent posts, I have mentioned the heavy recycling of newspaper coverage, often entire sentences verbatim, that affects undermines the value of many works that posed as primary sources. This was really bad when it came to the Washington correspondents of Massachusetts papers—Benjamin Perley Poore’s books were largely verbatim newspaper clippings, and often not even ones written by himself, even on issues about which he had direct knowledge. Clemmer’s were similar. This was not a big deal at the time, since it was much harder to access, duplicate, and and search through old records. Journalists mostly used whatever clippings they’d saved in their scrapbooks. But a lot of apparently corroborating accounts are actually a single account.
On top of that, younger journalists working for less prominent MA papers tended to simply reuse Clemmer’s columns after several years had passed, making minor edits and passing it off as their own work. Sometimes they badly mistranslated the original, obviously unfamiliar with the events mentioned, for which Clemmer’s work was probably their best source of information. Her columns functioned as an encyclopedia for young journalists, but, in the absence of alternative accounts, they were forced to reproduce her moralizing angle.
One example occurred in 1875, when “Carl,” a Washington correspondent of the Weymouth Gazette, copied the section of Clemmer’s then-recent book that addresses Mary Lincoln almost verbatim. Almost. He actually tweaked every sentence to make it more scathing, even though everyone knew Mary had just spent months in an insane asylum.
Here is an excerpt from Clemmer’s book, in which she criticizes Mary for “abandoning” her husband during the summers—in reality, it was an attempt to stay healthy during malaria season. It’s also not clear why Clemmer, given her views of Mary, would even think Lincoln wanted his wife around all the time.
It is hard to believe that many Americans were “Jarred…by Mrs. Lincoln’s life,” rather than by the fact that the country had devolved into Civil War. But “Carl” took it even further:
As [the president] passed the days and silent hours of the night in the companionship of his duties and his sorrows, she was at the fashionable watering-places, during the summer, and deep in the fashionable dissipation of society life in the winter. Such a life, though excusable possibly in times of peace and national prosperity, seemed under such exigencies . . . extremely culpable, if not utterly criminal.
Her now year-round misconduct had been upgraded to “extremely culpable” and even “utterly criminal”! By far the most egregious case of bad reporting in relation to Mary’s commitment, however, was the work of the London Observer, which claimed that “in consequence of the opposition of Senator Sumner, the pension to which she was fairly entitled was only given to her grudgingly and tardily."
Actually, Charles Sumner—who was a major celebrity in England and had died only the previous year—almost single-handedly forced that pension through the Senate. He filibustered Reconstruction-related matters in order to do it! Clemmer never commented on that, because it would have forced her to reconcile her love of Sumner and distaste for Mary Lincoln. In fact, the Springfield Republican ignored Sumner’s conspicuous involvement in the pension battle, despite giving it extensive coverage.
All this reminds me that I’ve been trying to figure out the identity of “Videx,” a Washington correspondent of Boston papers like the Boston Journal, Boston Budget, and Boston Post in the early 1880s. His column was often printed above Ben Perley Poore’s until the latter’s departure in 1883, a year which also seems to have marked Clemmer’s retirement. He may have been the same “Videx” who was active in journalism starting in the late 1860s, but it has been harder than usual to get any details on him, and there may have been more than one person using the pseudonym. As he became much more active in 1883, I’ve wondered if he was Poore’s assistant, being trained to succeed him, or even an alter ego of Poore or Clemmer, as it seemed excessive for the Boston Journal to carry two brief Washington reports with a similar tone and topic. And, in addition to being oddly quiet about his identity and background, “Videx” almost seemed to be a spicy foil for other journalists during the 1870s. And he seemed to disappear for long periods and then pop up again, as though this was not his main job, but that he was a entrenched in that circle and could get a gig whenever he felt like it. He might have been a politician or official, as his journalistic talent did not seem to explain his prominence in the Boston papers.
A great example of this would be an 1883 Boston Budget column which is clearly a rewrite of the Clemmer column quoted above—just look at the opening line:
Between you and I, dear reader, I regard this malaria as a gigantic humbug.
I’d say his revisions improved the column—lacking Clemmer’s obsession, he omitted the wife’s role completely—actually, in his version, the congressman appears to be a bachelor. Maybe that’s a hint as to his identity—this reads like it was written by a man who boards at fancy Washington hotels:
A congressman comes here from his rural home where he has dined at 1 o'clock, drank tea at seven, and gone to bed at nine, living the most quiet and decorous of lives. But here his existence is changed. After, remaining all day in the badly-ventilated hall, and having taken a variety of drinks in some nook of the Capitol, he sits down at seven to an elaborate repast, prepared by French cooks and served in courses with a variety of wines. Leaving the dinner-table at ten, he attends some official reception,' and about midnight indulges in terrapin and champagne, smoking cigars all the way home. It is not strange that in a few months he finds his digestion impaired, his appetite gone and his head aching badly in the morning. He writes home, however, that his indisposition is attributed to the Washington malaria.
Apparently the congressmen’s food and drink options had gotten better since the time of Clemmer’s writing. But “Videx” shows an even greater obliviousness to the way immunity to malaria works:
Thousands of citizens who have grown up here are living evidences that this location is a healthy one, but the malaria is handled as a concealment for a dissipated and irregular mode of life.
If anyone figures out the identity of “Videx,” please let me know. There was a “Videx” who was the Washington correspondent of the Rutland Herald, a Vermont paper, in the 1870s. His real initials were reportedly “J.S.A.” This may or may not be the same person.