Lincoln to White House

Seventy-two years ago last week a tall, grave man with chin whiskers entered Ford's Theatre in Washington to see a performance of Our American Cousin. Eleven hours later he was dead. Last week on the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination famed Collector Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach exhibited in his cluttered Philadelphia office a collection of Lincolniana which he values at more than $1,000,000. An important item was the notes of Dr. Charles S. Taft, the army surgeon who attended Lincoln's last hours.

Excerpt: "The pulse of the President fluctuated between 40 and 60 during the night, and varied in volume and force, sometimes being quite full and strong and then threadlike and feeble. . . . The wound ceased to bleed or discharge about 5:30 a. m. and from that time the breathing was stertorous, but gradually increased in frequency and decreased in strength up to the last breath, which was drawn at 21 minutes and 55 seconds after 7. . . ."

Filed for probate fortnight ago in Washington was the will of Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln, the Emancipator's daughter-in-law who died last month at the age of 90 (TIME, April 12). One of the Lincoln family's few precious objects which had not already been given to the Government was the Healy portrait of Lincoln, which showed him, nearly lifesize, seated with legs crossed, one finger along his cheek, the other hand clutching the chair arm. Robert Todd Lincoln, who became Secretary of War, Minister to the Court of St. James and president of Pullman Co., thought this the best likeness of his father ever painted. In her will, Mrs. Lincoln provided that the picture should remain in possession of her daughter, Mrs. Mary Lincoln Isham, during her life, then go to the Government, "provided it be given an appropriate place in the White House in Washington."*

Son of an Irish sea captain, George Peter Alexander Healy opened a studio in Boston when he was 18. When he approached a beauteous socialite and blurted a red-faced request that she sit for him, she consented, and thereafter Healy had smooth if not spectacular sailing during his long career. A facile workman, he did probably 1,000 portraits. He satisfied his customers with good likenesses--sometimes vigorous, sometimes podgy, never subtle. He enjoyed his work, left a batch of gossipy memoranda. Of Lincoln he wrote: "During one of the sittings, as he was glancing at his letters, he burst into a hearty laugh and exclaimed, 'As a painter, Mr. Healy, you shall be a judge between this unknown correspondent and me. She complains of my ugliness. . . . She wishes me to put on false whiskers, to hide my horrible lantern jaws. Will you paint me with false whiskers?' "

*Only Lincoln portrait now in the White House is one by William Cogswell, hanging on the north wall of the State dining room.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.