"If Abe don't fool away all his time on his books, he may make something yet."

Some days, you write a long, organized post that builds towards a point; other days you just hop in your boat and troll your trot line to see what’s turned up. Today what’s turned up is a bit of Honest Abe Lincoln, with a late appearance by Barack Obama.

1 A reminder last week, from the great new history blog the Edge of the American West, of the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation put me in the mood to read about Abraham Lincoln, so as I headed off on my travels I packed Douglas L. Wilson’s account of Lincoln’s early years, Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (1998).

In chronicling the transformation of Abraham Lincoln from a sharp-witted but uncultured and uneducated rube in 1831 to a young congressman and frontier leader in 1842, Wilson must rely on the testimony of Lincoln’s friends and neighbors of that period—testimony that, because it was collected during and after Lincoln’s presidency, is notoriously unreliable, suffering as it does not only from the natural defects of decades-old memory but also from elisions caused by a Victorian delicacy bordering on hagiography. Wilson therefore makes the smart decision to open the book with a chapter demonstrating the process by which he has sifted overlapping or conflicting accounts; it serves both as a marker of the rigor of his method and as a reminder of the basic fallibility of memory.

The incident Wilson chooses for his demonstration is a well-known wrestling match between the young Lincoln, newly arrived in the frontier town of New Salem, and local tough Jack Armstrong. To Lincoln’s nineteenth-century biographers, the incident—in which, to the best that Wilson can determine, Lincoln, who abided by the strict (and boring) rules of scientific wrestling, is thrown by his opponent’s use of an illegal move, which Lincoln takes in good spirits while still demonstrating his willingness to fight for his honor if necessary—was the turning point in Lincoln's life. From our perspective, that seems a stretch, but regardless it seems indisputable that Lincoln emerged from the match in a stronger position—no longer a stranger, but one of the guys, worthy of respect and forbearance.

This is all by way of leading up to the fun of a firsthand account of the bout from Jack Armstrong’s brother-in-law Henry McHenry, as reported later to Lincoln's law partner and eventual biographer William H. Herndon:

I was present at the wrestle of Lincoln & Armstrong--: We tried to get Lincoln to tussel & scuffle with Armstrong. L refused—saying—I never tussled & scuffled & will not—don’t like this wooling--& pulling--. Jack Armstrong was a powerful twister. At last we got them to wrestle: they took side holts.

I just love the phrasing there: wooling and pulling, tussled and scuffled, powerful twister. That's some good backwoods dialect.

2 Given that I've always taken joy in the proper name of the Christian Scientists—the First Church of Christ, Scientist—do you think I would get anywhere trying to start a church along the lines of the First Church of Lincoln, Scientific Wrestler?

3 Having written about the late George MacDonald Fraser yesterday, I can't help but note that he does a good job of depicting a fictional Lincoln (rendering him far more alive and believable than Gore Vidal does, for example). Flashman encounters Lincoln twice, first as a young Congressman in 1849 and later during the Civil War. His first meeting with Lincoln, in Flash for Freedom (1971) prompts Flashman to deliver the following description:

He was an unusually tall man, with the ugliest face you ever saw, deep dark eye sockets and a chin like a coffin, and ab lack cow's lick of hair smeared across his forehead. When he spoke it was with the slow, deliberate drawl of the American back-countryman.

Flash goes on to say,

I liked Abe Lincoln from the moment I first noticed him, leaning back in his chair with that hidden smile at the back of his eyes, gently cracking his knuckles. Just why I liked him I can't say; I suppose in his way he had the makings of as big a scoundrel as I am myself, but his appetites were different, and his talents infinitely greater. I can't think of him as good man, yet as history measures these things I suppose he did great good. Not that that excites my admiration unduly, nor do I put my liking down to the fact that he had a sardonic humour akin to my own. I think I liked him because, for some reason which God alone knows, he liked me. And not many men who knew me as well as he did, have done that.

Fraser presents Lincoln as sharply perceptive--a trait he shares in Fraser's account with Disraeli (whom Flashman, in his infinite genius for offensiveness, insists on calling "D'Israeli"). Lincoln is the only one in America who instantly sees through Flashman's lies, yet his appreciation of a scoundrel and good story causes him to let Flashman slide a bit, which allows Flashman to sneak away, only to encounter Lincoln once again months later when being chased by a backwoods Kentucky slave-hunter. Fraser presents Lincoln--angered as much by the slave hunter's Kentucky-style bullying as his horrible occupation--stopping the man cold with a strongly legalistic argument; for a Lincoln fan, it's a fully convincing scene.

4 All of which leads me, a few days after the stunning results of the Iowa Caucuses, to Barack Obama. Though Obama has been relatively subtle in his invocations of Abraham Lincoln, at the same time he hasn't exactly shied away from comparisons. (He has, however, sensibly, avoided mentioning such failed Illinois presidential aspirants as Adlai Stevenson and Paul Simon.) And while Lincoln's views on race were complicated--and discussing them is still a good way to find yourself in an argument--it's hard to imagine that Lincoln wouldn't take some joy in the fact that, 145 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, a black man has a very real chance to assume the office he once held.

Lincoln of course wouldn't be the only one; as Brad DeLong puts it:

This is also a day which makes Thaddeus Stevens and Frederick Douglass kiss the sky and shout hosannas—a day for which they worked but did not believe would ever come. A day when the corn-fed white voters of a state—or at least the Democratic Party's enthusiastic faithful of a state—choose a Black man, Barack Obama, as the one whom they think is most qualified to be President of the United States of America.

This is a sign that our longest and deepest national nightmare may finally be coming to an end.

To be honest, I think DeLong's being a bit too sanguine about our progress as a nation. He's not yet reckoning with the campaign we're sure to see should Obama secure the nomination, a campaign whose breathtaking racism is liable to make the Willie Horton ads look as decorous and proper as, well, scientific wrestling. But it's a start—and if there's a candidate who can deftly show the sickness of those brutal appeals while rising above them, it's Obama.

5 Having worked for years in Hyde Park, the neighborhood that Obama represented in the Illinois legislature, I knew he was impressive. But what fully won me to his bandwagon was hearing my parents tell about a town meeting he held in Carmi, their tiny southern Illinois town, as a sitting senator.

That part of the state is culturally Republican; it was one of the few counties in Illinois to plump for the reliably bat-shit insane Alan Keyes in 2004. Yet for more than an hour, Obama spoke and took questions from a crowd consisting largely of farmers and miners, actually answering questions rather than rattling off prepared positions—and, according to my parents—frequently telling the audience not what he thought they wanted to hear, but what he thought was right.

It wasn't clear that Obama won a lot of new votes that night, but he did seem to win a lot of respect. He didn't stay overnight in Carmi like Lincoln did in the 1840s; whether he left as indelible an impression remains to be seen.

6 Finally, to bring this full circle: since last summer I created, with rocketlass's help, a LOL Lincoln, here, just in time for New Hampshire, is a LOL Obama:


{Photo and LOL Obama by rocketlass.}

R. I. P. George MacDonald Fraser (1925-2008)

George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman novels, is dead at 82. Fraser wrote twelve novels starring the caddish Flashman, whose disreputable romps through the Victorian era offered readers constant displays of cowardice, arrogance, and unrepentant--though historically accurate--imperialism, racism, sexism, and general misanthropy. They were spectacular--if thoroughly disreputable--fun.

There are several full obituaries online, though my favorite is this one from the New York Times, if only because it informs readers that through the first nine novels, Flash had bedded 480 women (while being reliably cuckolded by his independent and lusty wife). That, it seems, sets a task for readers: time to log the conquests in the final three!

Ordinarily, for a writer I've enjoyed this much, I'd write a brief appreciation or pluck some appropriate lines from one of his books. But I don't think I can top the post I wrote a few weeks ago that offered a simple method for determining whether one ought to give the Flashman novels a try.

A simple method for determining whether you ought to try George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels

From Flash for Freedom (1971), by George MacDonald Fraser

By and large I'm partial to Americans. They make a great affectation of disliking the English and asserting their equality with us, but I've discovered that underneath they dearly love a lord, and if you're civil and cool and don't play it with too high a hand you can impose on them quite easily. I'm not a lord, of course, but I've got the airs when I want 'em, and know how to use them in moderation.

Having just returned from traveling and therefore having little time to write, I find this a particularly good topic for tonight because in a pinch it can be boiled down to a single question:

Do you instinctively smile when you see the word "roger" used as a verb?

If so, you are likely to find that the Flashman novels will provide you with hours of pleasant entertainment and disreputable diversion. Other indications of possible affinity are a healthy appreciation of swashbuckling and swordfighting; momentous events in British history related in first-person from the head of the retreat; the words "gallop" and "rattle" used as transitive verbs synonymous with "roger"; knavery, roguishness, scoundrelsy, and scampism; self-justification, judicious self-dealing, and frantic poltroonery; phrases like "boil his bile" and words like "harridan" and "mumchance"; or lines like these:

With the danger safely past, I was soon in good fettle again. As I've said before, there's nothing so cheering as surviving a peril in which companions have perished, and our losses had been heavy.

or this one:

We also serve who only turn and run.

But really, it all comes back to the rogering, with which sentiment I'm sure Flashman would agree.

Things come together

One of my favorite aspects of reading is the occasional serendipitous convergence, wherein something I’ve picked up one place turns up in another book I’m reading later. Nonfiction and fiction interweave, and knowledge gleaned in one area resonates in another. A reader brings those moments on himself, largely, through his preoccupations—in my case, it’s primarily my Anglophilia—but they’re still a pleasant surprise.

Reading George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman this weekend, I enjoyed several such moments. Flashman purports to be the first installment of the autobiographical writings of a Victorian soldier who happens also to be, in Harry Flashman’s own words, “a coward and a scoundrel.” Throw in womanizer, imperialist, opportunist, violent brute, misogynist, and casual racist, and you’ve got Flashman down. George MacDonald Fraser pretends to have been given the papers to edit upon their discovery in a trunk at mid-century; he’s been doling them out in novel-length installments since 1969.
Fraser found the germ of Flashman in a passing reference in the Victorian boys’ novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays; he’s mentioned as a bully who, deservedly, is drummed out of Rugby. From that mention, Fraser created a character whom he has now followed through more or less all the great military disasters and blunders of the Victorian era, from the charge of the Light Brigade to Little Big Horn. Throughout, Flashman cheats and lies and wenches his way, never sticking his neck out for anyone except himself; yet time after time, he ends up covered in undeserved glory. Explaining how he retailed a post-battle packet of lies to his superiors, Flashman says

I can say that I told it well—off-hand, but not over-modest; just a blunt soldier reporting to his seniors. It calls for nice judgment, this art of bragging; you must be plain, but not too plain, and you must smile only rarely. Letting them guess more than you say is the kernel of it, and looking uncomfortable when they compliment you.

At times, Flashman’s cowardice and lack of ethics can be downright uncomfortable. Fraser is doubtless saying something about the nature of heroism,the lies of hero-worship, and the concept of honor, but overriding such concerns is his desire to tell an exciting story—which he does, thereby somehow salvaging the time he’s asking us to spend with this frequently horrid man.

Flashman finds Harry Flashman beginning his military career serving under Lord Cardigan, commander of the 11th Hussars, later to enter history at Balaclava as the Light Brigade. Therein lay the weekend’s first convergence: about a year ago, I was given by my friend Maggie (about whose excellent gifts of books an entire post will come later) Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Reason Why, which, though nearly fifty years old, seems still to be regarded as the best account of the catastrophe that was the charge of the Light Brigade. It’s utterly engrossing, simultaneously an explanation and a riveting recreation. Lord Cardigan (whose name lives on in the sweaters he wore while awaiting orders on his yacht in the weeks before the charge) I knew from Woodham-Smith to be an arrogant martinet and world-class incompetent; fortunately, Flashman inadvertently manages, through a couple of ill-advised adventures with women, to get detached from the 11th Hussars—though he will eventually return, for he mentions later surviving the slaughter at Balaclava.

For now, he finds himself serving in Afghanistan, which the British had recently invaded in order to prop up a friendly king and thus ensure a buffer between India and Russia. That was the second convergence: New Year’s weekend I spent editing my friend Steve’s thesis, wherein he applies social movement theory to the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War and the mujahideen fighting against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1970s. Reading the novel, I kept thinking back to Steve’s thesis and seeing a direct line between the meddling of the British Empire and the meddling of the United States and Russia in more recent times. Flashman sees through it all; one of the benefits of a narrator who is utterly unsentimental and truthful is that he clearly sees all illusions—even those of an empire he’s serving—as ultimately self-serving lies. The British position is unjustifiable and untenable, and Flashman’s only concern is that he live through the inevitable disaster.

Just as in reality, the British are forced from their station in Kabul in an ignominious retreat that quickly turns into a deadly rout, the horrors of which Fraser conveys as well as anyone I’ve read. Harried by Afghan raiding parties, the army of 14,000 (some 4,000 soldiers, with the rest families, servants, and Indian and Afghan camp followers) is doomed from the start. Within days, it is utterly destroyed, with but a single man surviving to reach the garrison at Jallalabad. I had a clear image of him riding in, but it took a few hours for me to realize that the image was not my own: it was from a painting by a Lady Butler, The Remains of an Army, which I had seen a year or two ago in A. N. Wilson’s The Victorians.

Flashman of course survives as well, though detached from the army in a harrowing battle midway through the march. He survives in large part because he has by chance teamed up with a non-commissioned officer, Sergeant Hudson. In the course of their flight, he begins to think about the relationship of officers and the lower ranks, much along the lines of what I discussed earlier on this blog when writing about Admiral Nelson. Early in the escape, noting Hudson’s particular competence, Flashman says

I found myself considering this Sergeant Hudson for the first time, for beyond noticing that he was a steady man I had given him not much notice before. After all, why should one notice one’s men very much?

Writing sixty years later, however, about Hudson’s questioning of some of the command decisions that led to the ruination of the army, Flashman says

I didn’t think much of Hudson’s questions about Gandamack and Elphy at the time; if I had done I would have been as much amused as angry, for it was like a foreign language to me then. But I understand it now, although half our modern generals don’t. They think their men are a different species still—fortunately a lot of ‘em are, but not in the way the generals think.

Knowing what he himself is not—good, brave, ethical, self-sacrificing—Flashman is all the more impressed when he finds those qualities, and so is the reader.
But Flashman learns nothing from Hudson’s heroism, except possibly that the wages of heroism are death, and he ends the book unrepentant and covered in the false glory that only an empire can bestow. He’s even featured in a cartoon in Punch, which makes for the weekend’s final convergence, as Punch’s editor for many years was the father of novelist Penelope Fitzgerald, whose review of Barbara Pym first set me to reading Pym, about whom more later this week.

I think this is what paranoids are talking about, only less sinister: if you’re looking for pattern, it’s there to be found.