and it will be remembered in moors, fens, and locks. If
your crown, coming from a woman’s head, needs adjusting
our adjusters are sure hands, toward continuity.
Henley Street
Stratford
When Susanna visited me in London we ate at the Swann:
she loved the rich and badly seasoned food, the purpled
windows and painted scripture walls. “Oh, Papa, this is a
wonderful Inn... Oh, Papa, isn’t that a beautiful house
by the river? Think of living there! Those people must be
awful rich! Will we get that rich? ...Papa, I’ve never
seen such beautiful books... And look, look at the Thames
in the sun; the sun seems squashed right into the water.
And can we really ride in a boat again, down toward the
ocean?”
Enthusiasm was her best quality. And very little
perturbed her. Trash strewn in the street, a dead cat,
brawling seamen...she drew back in disgust but soon found
something exciting or beautiful. When I sleepwalked and
stumbled against a table and broke the rush lamp, she was
undisturbed. She kissed me, and we talked about what we’d
do tomorrow. She was fifteen, then. Fifteen—what an age!
She wanted to remain with me in London and I would have
permitted it if I could have looked after her. There was
no budging Ann to the city. Some thought Susanna a hussy.
Fun-loving, keen at games, she outplayed her friends.
While she played I would be at my writing. In the midst
of her fun, she might pop up and say: “Papa, you’re
working too hard: you never have fun.” Her consideration
brought me to my senses and I remembered growing up with
six kids: none of them had her brightness. Of course the
years changed her: her copper hair darkened: her
enthusiasm faded: marriage ruined her figure: marriage
made her a business woman: her hussiness became sexmate:
Dr. Hall her all! How clearly I can remember today...a
warning. And why do I write?
Shakespeare discovers Ellen’s blue cloak
in a heap of theatre crud in his Stratford
closet:
Puzzled, he sits on the floor, holds up the
cloak,
checks the fabric, his face sickly:
Fog at the door of his house.
Henley Street
Stratford
February 24, 1616
R
ummaging in my storeroom, I found forgotten things,
things I had supposed lost or destroyed, a velvet jacket
faced with grubby ermine, a pair of crimson trousers, a
leather breastplate and brass helmet ornamented with a
dragon’s crest. It annoyed me that none of these things
had deteriorated. For some unfathomable reason—Caesaria
ego—I put on the breastplate and helmet and gaped at
myself. How now, that sickly face and stupidity: my
stupid room, some of it visible in the same glass: the
odious German etchings Judith gave me, Papa’s cracked
leather chest, the unpolished table, seamed plaster and
varnished beams.
Tossing breastplate and helmet into the storeroom, I
noticed something. A cloak? Lifting it out of a box,
unfolding it, I thought it was her blue theatre cloak.
How could it be, after having disappeared years ago, in
the street? But, holding it higher, I searched for the
slash and the blood stains. Of course it had been
cleverly cleaned and mended! I was too disturbed to go
over it carefully. No...no...I dropped it and put out the
light and went to bed.
Lying there, I watched sky, clouds floating, white over
stars and then the stars dazzlingly near and then the
cloud-cloak covering them once more, drowning.
Fear sifts through my fingers and mind.
What am I—a lie? Was she a lie? Was life? The cloak?
Why haven’t I, if I am sure of myself, seen to it that
my plays have been published? I leave nothing. Nothing!
Antony, Hamlet, Macbeth, Winter’s Tale, Romeo...not one.
I must speak to Jonson and Alleyn. I must write to them
at once!
Fog lay about in pieces like pieces of my life. Ground
fog.
In the starlight I glared at my hands and saw that they
were swollen, as they have often been lately.
Wasn’t that snow falling, flakes of morning?
I tried to remember Ellen’s face, tried to feel her
presence.
When Ann brought me breakfast I could not look at her
though she spoke to me kindly.
I write with costly effort—hands worse. I am cold. My
mind staggers.
To the oriel—to look outside.
Thinking makes poverty.
Religion as we came to regard it in London was a glib
and soiled art.
Eclipses of our mental sun and moon betray us; so I
beseech you, brain, do not regress as time shows time’s
ending: old and reverend, think straight.
Eater of broken meats I seem to be: knave, rascal,
ruffian. Reverence to self...
Perhaps this cold world will turn us all to fools and
madmen...
Stratford
Why is it I grimace so much? Alone I mug, pull my
beard, rub flat of hand over my eyes, crack knuckles,
shrug, sigh. Is this my sane monologue with self? What’s
its purpose? Perhaps I must convince myself that I am
alive and battling: grimace at the window, grimace on the
pot, grimace at bed. Grimace is my hornbook. For the best
of self-conviction I prefer knuckle cracking—such
skeletal speech.
Stratford
February 26, 1616
So I’ll never know who attacked Ellen?
Is it because I am sick that I care?
Could it be that someone stepped from his stage of
bitterness and struck her that night the fog drowned her
carriage? Did he resent my luck? The harder poverty
knocked the keener he felt my good luck: was that how it
was? Was hunger a knife in his belly? Did he run away
from London afterward? His hungry, motherless kids asked
him to kill for money? Was that how it was?
“Your brother Fred is here, bending over you...”
“Was that Ann, who said that yesterday? Or was it Hall,
bending over me, who said that Fred had come by?”
Ellen, could you come? Or Hamlet? Othello? Marlowe?
Stratford
March 5, 1616
Years ago I wrote this:
Can honor set a leg? Or set an arm? Or take away the
pain of a wound? What is honor? A word? What is that
word? Air? What has it? The fellow who died on Wednesday,
does he feel it? Does he hear it?
But I still hear it...honor lives for me, in my
memories of my father, for all those who have worked
before I came into being, for the cathedral spire, the
ship, the cut gem, the book, the play, the figure
standing in sun and snow...
13th
Very sick for three days. Dr. Hall. Others.
Pain.
Can’t get to the oriel.
Wouldn’t know a hawk from a handsaw.
15th
I go before my darling,
I go before...
Follow to the bower in the close alley,
There we will together sweetly kiss
And like two wantons, dally—dally—dally...
Sing it again—sing to me before I die—the candles are
dying—the wind is dying—I suffocate in my room—I want to
be with you—sing our song—oh, to dally once more—sing—
March 18, 1616
Judith married early because I felt I could not last
much longer... Judith, will a hundred and fifty pounds
help you, with that husband who doesn’t want to work? A
fine son-in-law...but...ah, the trouble I have caused.
She could have waited...but, at that time...she
thought... My will is insufficient...
Illness is such folly
I still remember names
Alleyn was here to see me...
Burbage won’t come...the man you care most to see,
cares less for thee.
March 19
My affection remains, blazes as it were: there were
winnings: good things strive to help us: come unto the
yellow sands for their beneficence: hark: a pox against
pain: who has pain! No. Defy the monsters, prod the
phoenix, bury pignuts, come forward magical, fecundate
freedom, build, levy songs.
I need Raleigh’s elixir! If men concoct an elixir of
youth it is too late for me.
Then, that elixir of elixir of elixirs, hebenon!
Sprinkle it.
March 21, 1616
Now that I am sick, it seems so rare a thing I once
climbed elms for rook’s nest and slashed all afternoon,
in the August sun, to scythe the timothy in rows. I was
fifteen, I think it was. Larks flew and sang. I liked the
click-a-click of my scythe as it bladed. Crickets
chirped. Magpies and jackdaws took the air. There was a
kingfisher diving.
I long to dive where I used to swim, at Gray’s pool,
alongside the burned mill; I used to strip and plunge off
the sluice, after working in the field. Or we used to
swim there—five or six of us—and test who could stay
under longest, test—what was it I wanted to test?
Cowslips grew cap-a-pie on two sides of that pool and
their cinque-spotted faces got trampled underfoot as we
dashed nakedly about, lewdly knuckling each other’s
penis. Banks of violets were thick on the shady side of
the mill, thickest among heaps of smashed and rotting
shingles...her favorite flower! Hers!
Home
Suppertime
Getting ready to die is looking across a stage through
semi-darkness; it is muffing one’s lines; it is listening
to incomprehensible promptings; it is taking the wrong
exit. It is tampering with the plot, eliminating the star
from the best scenes, substituting a beginner. Getting
ready to die is watching the candle gutter, hearing the
rooster before dawn, saying love’s good-bye; it is the
footstep on the stair, the reveled, sleeved and broken
sword.
Getting ready to die is no man’s business!
O, that this too, too solid flesh...
Home – Evening
March 27, 1616
For several days my eyesight has failed and I have been
unable to write. I have less pain but I can not eat. They
talk to me and I lie here, restless, hearing, hearing...
I want to hear something like a promise, an echo of
things hoped for.
That knocking at the door!
Rain over the house.
To sleep, to sleep...
March 28, 1616
When I was twenty, splendid, strong, I thought it would
be noble to die in the Spring: ah, noble death I praised
you childishly. This is springtime, and I see no signs of
nobility.
Tired with all these, for restful death I
cry—
how like a poem those lines read, and lie! At that time,
when I wrote that sonnet, I was never more in love with
life.
For days the rain has been falling over the town, fine
rain, grey rain that is determined to shatter the last of
my courage...for days.
Ann stands by my bedside, a plate of food in her hands,
urging me to eat: “Take something...it will help you,
Will.”
Susanna sits by my side and sighs, “Papa, Papa.”
Alleyn visits me, his voice warming my room, in the
beaten way of friendship.
March 30, ’16
Again I am reminded I must complete my will—and so I
must.
Tomorrow I’ll dictate...how will it go?
In the name of God, I, William Shakespeare, gentleman,
in perfect health and memory, make and ordain this last
will and testament...
How can I say perfect health and memory?
I commend my soul into the hands of God, hoping and
believing to be made a partaker of life everlasting, and
my body to the earth thereof it is made... Custom...
Item: I bequeath to my daughter, Judith, a hundred and
fifty pounds (shall I make it more?); in addition, I
grant her my estate in Warr County—I like that place...
To Joan—I leave my clothes. Why?
To Elizabeth Hall, I leave my silverware...
To Thomas Combe, my sword. (I liked that sword...its
inlaid hilt!)
To Richard Burbage (good friend), money for a ring.
For daughter, Susanna Hall, my home, barns, stables,
orchards, gardens, lands, tenements...my new house in
Blackfriars.
To Ben Jonson—fifty pounds and this journal. Short-
changed again, Ben.
Item: to my wife, my second best bed and our furniture.
(It should be more. What shall it be?)
To Dr. John Hall, all settlements after the payment of
debts...there is no more...
I must remember to speak in a clear voice.
In two sepia rectangles, the renowned
Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare and the
famous Gerard bust...
The bust revolves slowly as a voice intones
Shakespeare’s last will.
The talking portrait speaks from the
Stratford church wall: through the open door
of the church a blue cloak half conceals the
Non Sanz Droict coat-of-arms.
LINCOLN’S JOURNAL
For Freedom
All of the quotations of Abraham Lincoln’s writings are
in the public domain:
Pages
521 lines 9-10
522
523 entire page
524
525 lines 1-4 and 22-24
526
524 lines 2-5
528 lines 1-3
534 lines 11-12
537 lines 25-30
538 lines 1-26 and 30
539 lines 1-21 and 26-33
544 lines 10-14
548 lines 18-20
556 lines 29-30
557 lines 1-4
560 lines 3-11
563 line 15
568 lines 5-7 and 12-20
572 lines 14-17
575 lines 17-20
579 line 3
585 lines 18-25
586 lines 1-6
587
588 lines 22-29: Diary quotation,
Doneway & Evans, A Treasury of the
World’s Great Diaries
589 lines 1-2: ibid.
591 lines 5-16: quotation from Ohn
Quincy, President of
Harvard, Harvard Record
591 lines 19-23
592
592 lines 1-2
598 line 26: song, “Tenting Tonight”
603 lines 15-23
605 lines 23-26
606 lines 9-15
607 lines 24-28
610 lines 15-19: Shiloh quotation,
Doneway & Evans
1
Executive Mansion
May 4, 1863
N
ot long after my inauguration I made a resolution to
write something about my life. Writing, late at night, I
hoped to escape the pressures of the war and go back into
time.
April 12, 1861 — at 4:30 a.m., the war began.
Thirty-nine days after my inauguration!
When I called for 75,000 volunteers, I thought
hostilities would end soon. I thought of many things in
those trying days. There was the terrible summer of ’82,
when wheat fields were swept by gunfire, 20,000
Confederates died, the Union lost 16,000. Boys, mostly
boys. Which General woke me during the night? Dark days,
dark nights. The Army of the Potomac had 100,000
soldiers. Their losses and gains are part of me.
Deserters, absentees, spies—each is part of me. The
wounded, the sick, the dying, the dead—they are part of
me.
Oh, Traveler, why did you bring this war?
And Wall Street remembers this war! Fears it!
There seemed to be panic in rooms of this building.
The two years I have been here have taught me a great
deal about men and self.
Yet, now, now I will record my life though life surges
around Washington, though each one of us is sorely tried;
we have read anew life’s “great tragic volume,” as John
Adams called it. The pages lie open as drums thud along
the Potomac.
Executive Mansion
May 7, 1863
North versus South, we have a population of 18 million
fighting a population of 5 million, folly vs. folly,
brother vs. brother, Commander Lee vs. General Lee, Major
Crittenden vs. General Crittenden.
Europeans assure me that my cause is a lost cause. They
say I will never eradicate slavery. The South says I will
never end slavery because it is an honorable way of life.
Our Indian brothers have sided with the South. But it is
the cause of the Union that gives us strength, gives us
right.
Union forever...flags...they wave yet do not
heal...they acclaim patriotism. But patriotism can blind
us. It is a “whirlwind,” as Emerson reminds us. For my
part, it is my oath to preserve and protect this
government of freedom for all men.
My convictions do not wane as cabinet members fail me.
I am firmly convinced that tact can win against men who
oppose, who are selfish or temporarily deaf. I believe
the citizenry understands me as I understand them, as
they pour into my office and talk with me.
May 19, 1863
I reaffirm myself.
I wish to tell that I was a man of the wilderness; I
wish to write about my mother, about my village of New
Salem, my home in Springfield with its maple trees. I see
the sunlight in my office windows and it is also the
sunlight of my boyhood and youth.
Tomorrow night, with my lamps lit and candles on my
desk, I will begin to find out who I am.
I will begin to go back twenty years, thirty years,
forty years. Snow storms will batter our log cabin. I
will recall what it was to go hungry. I will try to fit
together hours, days, nights. I’ll open the prairie
schooner of my brain.
I had requested the telegraph office: NO TELEGRAMS
between one and 5 a.m.
To commence my diary I will use lines I wrote a few
years ago for an Illinois newspaper.
May 20, 1863
I am six feet four inches tall and weigh one hundred
and eighty pounds. I am lean, muscular, have dark skin,
coarse black hair and grey eyes. My legs and arms are
long; my hands are large; I wear a size 12 shoe.
I was put to work when I was about eight or nine—farmed
out for 13 cents a day. I cut wood, mended fences, herded
cattle, dug ditches. At home, I milked our cow, lugged
pails of water, cleaned slop, fed the stove. Weather
meant almost nothing to my family; we lived exactly like
Indians in our 3-sided cabin. We ate like Indians—when we
could. At times we said nothing to each other for days on
end that could be in any way construed as interesting.
Executive Mansion
May 22, 1863
I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County,
Kentucky. My parents were born in Virginia, of
undistinguished families—second families, perhaps I
should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of
a family of the name of Hanks...
My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated
from Virginia to Kentucky about 1781, where a year or two
later he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by
stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the
forest.
My father, at the death of his father, was but six
years of age, and he grew up literally without education.
When I was eight he removed from Kentucky to Indiana; we
reached our new home about the time the state came into
the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and
other wild animals still in the woods...
My father settled in an unbroken forest, and the
clearing away of surplus wood was the great task ahead.
Though very young I had an ax put in my hands...and from
that, till within my twenty-third year, I was constantly
handling that useful instrument.
...A few days before the completion of my eighth year,
in my father’s absence, a flock of wild turkey approached
our new log cabin. Standing inside, I shot through a
crack and killed one of them. I have never since pulled a
trigger on larger game.
I think that the aggregate of all my schooling did not
amount to one year. I was never in a college or academy
as a student, and never inside of a college or academy
building till I had a law license. After I was twenty-
three and had separated from my father, I studied English
grammar. I have studied and nearly mastered the six books
of Euclid since I became a member of Congress.
Executive Mansion
June 1, 1863
In the wilderness there were some schools, so called,
but no qualification was ever required of a teacher
beyond “readin’, writin’ and cipherin’ ” to the rule of
three. If a straggler, supposed to understand Latin,
happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked
upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite
ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I
did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write,
and cipher to the rule of three... The little advance I
now have upon this store of education I have picked up
from time to time under the pressure of necessity.
My father lived in Knob Creek, Kentucky; from this
place he removed to Spencer County, Indiana, in the
autumn of 1816; I was eight. The removal was partly on
account of his resentment of slavery, but chiefly on
account of the difficulty in acquiring legal land titles.
I became a sort of clerk in New Salem; I served as
postmaster; then came the Black Hawk War; I was elected a
Captain of volunteers, a success which gave me more
freedom than any I have had since.
I went on the campaign, a campaign that led nowhere,
except to the dead, that row of eleven men, lying in the
sun, each head neatly scalped. I ran for legislature the
same year (1832), and was beaten. It is the only time I
ever have been beaten by the people. The next and three
succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the state
legislature.
As I rode horseback along the county roads something
rode with me, an inner person. Beside the road, my horse
browsing, I read a book. I remember sitting by a creek,
listening to the frogs in the chill spring air; there was
that person, that inner force.
I knew that there was little or no chance for
advancement in this rural community unless it came
through politics. So, politics had to shine my shoes and
buy my trousers. I would prove that honesty was
appreciated here. I would fit it into the crown of my
hat.
June 5, 1863
It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make
anything out of my early life. It can be all condensed
into a simple sentence, and that sentence you will find
in Grey’s Elegy: “The short and simple annals of the
poor.”
And I add Grey’s lines for myself :
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
One more thought:
My mother was the illegitimate daughter of Lucy Hawks,
and a well-bred Virginia farmer. God bless her; all that
I am or ever hope to be I owe to her. I believe that I
inherited extra drive from her unfortunate background.
That drive stands me in good stead.
Executive Mansion
June 10, 1863
I have experienced death many times. My aunt, my uncle,
my brother’s death. Then my mother’s death of milk
sickness. Such suffering. I whittled the pegs for her
coffin. I can see her grave outside our cabin. I could
see it each time we opened the door. In the spring and
often during the summer I placed flowers on her grave.
She loved lilacs and roses. Her kindness lingers on.
Friends called her a woodland madonna.
Later, when my step-mother came, her love was felt by
each one of us.
“Let me help you, Abe. Let me strain the milk
tonight...you’re tired. What a big stack of wood you’ve
cut for us, son. That should last a while!”
She could handle an ax. She could lug a sack of flour.
When wolves howled, she’d lean over me and say a few
words or kiss my forehead. When my shoulders ached she
rubbed them with bear grease.
“If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul
to take,” is a prayer she taught me.
Sometimes we planted pumpkin seeds together, on a
nearby slope. She was faster than I. Again and again, she
urged me to attend school. Each time we moved, she
located the nearest schoolhouse. “You’ve got to go, Abe.”
I used to read to her.
She liked Aesop’s Fables best. We’d sit in the evening
sun and lean against the side of the cabin and I would
read. We learned the fables quickly. Her favorite fable
was “The Wolf and the Crane.” In those days, my favorite
was “The Snake and a File.”
The White House
June 12, 1863
Often, when I am alone and tired, I remember the hot
sun of the prairie summer, how it seems to hold down
everything as far as the eye can see. I remember how it
climbed almost every morning—like a wheel.
I remember the squeaking of leather as my horse pulled
his plow; there was small corn growing nearby, in field
after field. There were birds.
There is a biting sense of loss, looking into the past:
we know this is something that can never take place
again. We know, too, that we can resurrect ourselves,
sometimes pleasurably. Today, I esteem those glimpses
that reassure me, in spite of their passing. Without them
I think life would be so overcome by the present it would
be difficult to continue living.
The better life should be everyman’s goal, a life that
is not eaten up by toil, a life where there is freedom
for thought, freedom for action. Men should be able to
draw from the past; men should be able to construct for
the present, a plan. Man should have time to evolve for
himself and posterity—a heritage evoking pride leading to
achievement that makes life worth living.
The White House
June 20, 1863
Some of my happy days were passed in East Salem, when I
was an Illinois postmaster. Since the mail arrived only
twice a week, I could peruse the Louisville Journal and
the Intelligencer. I think there were about twenty-five
families living in Salem in those days. I enjoyed
delivering the mail personally; there was ample time to
be friendly. So, I stuffed the letters inside my hat and
walked from house to house. I got to know everybody that
way. Summers were easy times. Remembering those summers
they seem to stretch in a long line, with groves and
fishing spots here and there.
I remember a huge boulder where I used to sit. Probably
I had delivered my last letter. A rabbit liked to sit
near me. I would shut my eyes and appreciate the
greatness of life in the rabbit, in the trees around me,
in the wind—the greatness that existed in my mother’s
life.
June 24, 1863
At the Burkes’ home, not far from the post office, I
rented a room. The Burkes, who are Quakers, a family of
two, put themselves out for me, and gave me an upstairs
room with a lamp. At night I got out needle and thread
and mended my clothes, or, sitting in a leather chair, I
read. Charles Burke and I fashioned that chair.