Sorry for the delay in posting…events have made my mind rather unfocused. But all the talk of using a synthetic form of quinine to treat COVID-19 revived my memory of an article I’d discovered a while ago.
On March 23, 1898, the Fredonia Censor published Franklin Burritt's reminiscences about Lincoln and Springfield life. Apparently some Fredonia friends had written to him, knowing that he had lived in Springfield during Lincoln’s time.
"I am apprehensive you place too partial an estimate upon my powers when you ask me to write touching such an all-encompassing subject as Abraham Lincoln—a theme which has elicited the best efforts of bright men and women the world over,” he wrote, noting he’d delayed responding. “I feel my insignificance and the vastness of my topic.”
Yet he said he knew Lincoln “very well” before the war. He had moved to Springfield in 1854 and owned a store, near the post office where people lined up and Lincoln often talked to them. Lincoln’s office was next door. He remembered “Mr. Lincoln’s sallies and the keen repartee of Tom Lewis, the miller, whose wit Mr. Lincoln always seemed to enjoy.”
Burritt kept some new interesting books in the shop, and Lincoln would occasionally browse through them. In one book, there was a lecture “devoted to a review of the different modes of dying and the pathology of sudden death.” Lincoln came across it and became absorbed, saying it was the most remarkable dissertation he had ever read.
“Flowing from some suggestion in Watson [author of a popular medical text] regarding what may be called ‘Scientific Freaks,’ I on one occasion heard Mr. Lincoln talk about monstrosities and abnormal living things, which showed that reading had led him into the fascinating realm of biology and teleology. I remember to my great surprise he alluded to Darwin, Cuvier and Kant. The wonderful facts touching the birth of the living germs of all animals from a single cell, and the splitting up and multiplying of such cells, he understood. I remember that he expressed wonderment and admiration at the mysterious and inexplicable scheme of Nature, by which, in one case, the egg or cell is developed into a chicken, in another into a lion, and still another to an elephant. The prairie-lawyer had grasped the pivotal fact of creation—that freaks and monstrosities and anomalous growths, in common with all the myriad differences, physical and mental, of created beings, spring from the manipulation, interference or environment of the primordial cell.”
He believed Lincoln was an agnostic, but believed the testimony about his prayerful habits as president. Then he began to focus on his memories of Lincoln’s law partner, William H. Herndon, “a very eccentric, but a very intelligent man. I became intimately acquainted with him.” Herndon, known to struggle with alcohol, was then sober, but was a “quinine fiend,” apparently having developed a nervous habit where he gobbled it down. Quinine was a commonly used malarial medication, but isn’t known to get you buzzed, as far as I know. It does have some physical and psychological side effects that may have affected Herndon. However, it is also possible that Herndon suffered chronic malaria and needed the medication. In any event, “No man told a story better than he, or was more companionable and jocose.” He knew all the works of literature, said Burritt.
I believe Herndon’s intellect and personality is often underrated—there’s a reason Lincoln chose to spend so much time with him. I highly recommend David Herbert Donald’s biography, which really captures his essence. Burritt does the same, and his perspective seems to be hearing Herndon’s tales of Lincoln in later years:
Captain Halliday dubbed him ‘Pope Herndon.’ He often sat in quite late. He worshipped Lincoln . . . I learned through Herndon all about the idiosyncrasies of the great lawyer. ‘Bill’ knew all of Lincoln’s stories, and he told them well, for he had learned all of their quirks.
“I am afraid if I venture to tap my Herndon reminiscences, I shall weary my readers,” he wrote. I wish I could have been there to tell him to continue. He gave an extract from Herndon’s controversial book on Lincoln, declaring:
“The book is just what one who knew ‘Pope’ Herndon would expect from his erratic mind. Knowing the author and the great historical character whom he sought to denote, I was profoundly interested in the work. Great part of it is a medley of the serious and the comic, the pathetic and the grotesque. Herndon was a keen analyst, and as a close association and law-partner of Lincoln, he possessed great opportunities attentively to study the make-up of the man. The book is a laborious and critical dissection….
Herndon really didn’t get as much pushback as has been portrayed. Everyone knew that Herndon was an interesting fellow and no one expected something free of controversy. Making sense of Herndon’s work on Lincoln is quite a task, something I chip away at. I can’t make much sense out of the whole thing with him and Mary Lincoln, but I don’t think we have the whole story there. Will keep trying . . . stay safe.