LookingLand

had trouble sitting still this weekend. painted couple of pages (really need to do more, though), scanned some stuff, rearranged a few of my books (they may start cannibalizing each other at any moment due to overcrowding), and came up with at least twenty ideas for cool things to do or make that aren't exactly on my schedule, like adapt the über-ridiculous overblown, gratuitous, slightly nauseating poem The Praesidicide for the stage.

Hylton's 6,000+ line epic poem (in the first-person voice of J.W. Booth himself) may have the dubious distinction of being the first piece of Lincoln Assassination fan fiction published (within the year of the deed ~ beating out Townsend's Katy of Catoctin by decades). if anyone knows of any literary effort on the subject published in that period, feel free to bring it to my attention ~ the more, the merrier, right?

in other Pursuance news (it's been a while since i've blogged about this temporarily dormant project), over the course of the summer i acquired yet more books on the subject for my ever-growing collection, including the prize find of a copy of George Porter's prison diary (The Surgeon in Charge). it's incredibly rare and i got it for an absolute steal ~ $15 on amazon. someone wasn't minding the store, i guess). i've only ever seen one other copy for sale and it sold for $75.

i also bought Geary's Murder of Abraham Lincoln at ComicCon. I would have got Geary to sign it (he signed my Jack the Ripper), but alas he was nowhere to be found this year.

finally, i found a cheap copy of Jampoleer's Last Lincoln Conspirator, which i still think is pretty dang solid book for being an overwritten subject.

i continue to keep my eyes peeled for a cheap copies of the various histories of the 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry (alas no luck and they seem to be getting rarer, fetching about $40-$60 a piece), as well as Arno Press's published transcript (which i've only ever seen one volume for sale ~ for $100, though someone bought it). the copy of John Wilkes Booth, Himself that i have been eying for some time also jumped in price this past year, up $85 to a whopping $375 (geh! i'm crazy, but i'm not that crazy!), and no cheap copies of Kimmel's Mad Booths of Maryland nor Bates' Lincoln in the Telegraph Office have presented themselves (the going price on each is about $60 for a decent copy). if i weren't so dang picky about the editions, i might have already bought copies of some of these things, but, well, there you have it. all too rich for anyone's blood, frankly. i paid $70 for my first copy of Doster's Lincoln and Episodes of the Civil War (and much less for the second copy), but only because it's my favorite non-fiction book ever and i still intend to be buried with it.

and yes, occasionally i buy groceries, though i confess i haven't really bought many new clothes except the occasional pair of jeans and a shirt in years. i flinch at paying more than $10 for a blouse, but waft a $20 book of my desire under my nose and it's a bargain!

and i need another bookcase so bad, but if i spend money on a bookcase, how can i buy more books???

it's all a conundrum.



"In Memory of Abraham Lincoln:
The Reward of the Just"
D. T. Weist, 1865
from Lincoln at 200

oh the immensity ~ !



[crawls into a corner and dies]

Recently I posted about a project I brought home involving the experimental restoration of 14 volumes of Harper's Monthly Magazine. As I have been working on the books, I've been perusing some of the contents. In June of 1881 an article appeared about Edwin Booth. This opening is the sort of film-worthy anecdote that makes the Booths so irresistible, so I thought I would share it.

( article portion is under a cut for bigness )

p.s. the article respectfully makes no mention of that other brother.

x-posted to jwb1865.

It's nearly April and I haven't gotten back to In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy, which is just a crying shame. If I can't "launch" it mid-April, I will definitely at least try to be knee deep working on it then. I just ordered Steers's two new books: The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: Their Confinement and Execution, As Recorded in the Letterbook of John Frederick Hartranft ~ (grumble grumble grind and grumble), and The Lincoln Assassination: The Evidence (less grumbling).

I'm sure they will kick me off in the right direction ~ if only out of sheer fury on the first count.

But then, this is what happens when you come up with an idea and then sit on it for two years. I will never learn.

: o p

this morning i woke up thinking about how i had (oops) missed posting the Monday Millennium recap. then i realized it was thursday and boy did i ever miss it! i guess i got bogged down in other truck and deals and annoying life junk of no interest to any of you. suffice it to say, all is well in the world and despite the inhospitably cold temps recently and about of week of missing time, the month of march is rolling through with thus far record productivity.

i launched the Reconstruction site over at EpiGuide last sunday and got some excellent feedback on some of my lack of intuitive web-building. i made some changes to help the site be more user-friendly and i think it's looking pretty great. now i just need to get on the stick about creating content. i've fallen behind and am nowhere near where i wanted to be in terms of catching up to where it was the story left off three (or four?) years ago. beh.

anyway, this is completely random, but here's two recent cool articles on interesting bits of ephemera related to the man in the funny hat:

Collector: Lincoln photo uncovered in Grant album; and ~

In Lincoln's watch, mystery revealed

fun stuff ~ !

: D

The Smithsonian has an exhibit of the man in the funny hat's truck and deals in honor of the Obama-mama-man's inauguration. I'm going to (maybe not so delicately) avoid any discussion of why I think this is tacky, but I belong to a peculiar American minority that feels conflicted about sanctifying pseudo-martyrs. And Johnnie B., you were such a dumb cluck (I have to say it). Anyway...cool picture though! I can definitely appreciate a nice black frock.

And for the 187th time (and I mean it). I don't hate Abraham Lincoln. We've certainly had many many many worse presidents.

I wanted to launch the good ship In Pursuance this spring, but right now I'm pretty overwhelmed with other things. If I were more organized I could juggle everything a lot better. But the more I try to organize, the more I can't seem to find anything that I need. I recently acquired Lloyd Lewis' Myths after Lincoln and William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues (they followed me home!), so it's not like I've stopped thinking on the subject. If anything, I think I have a clearer angle on how I want to tell the story and I have a solid outline of the chronology. What I really need now is to get the "scholarship" part in order. And even though this is not really a story about Lincoln, I would be less than honest if I said I wasn't concerned about being fair (my biases overriding my common sense most of the time). So I want to be careful. My original intention was to avoid the issue of Lincoln & Booth altogether. They are not what the story is about. But part of me says it's absurd to think I can get away without addressing the issue. Even if it is in the Ford Theater greenroom over a game of poker. When I look at Kate Beaton's work, I think: my God, this doesn't have to be so complicated!

So cross your fingers. I may get it together yet. But today I don't have time for this. I've got an outline for a novel I'm trying to poke into some semblance of sense.

from LookingLand.com

Every Christmas I can't resist buying myself at least one book that's "special" in some way: something I have maybe wanted for a while, something that seemed too exorbitant to throw money at, or something just fun or interesting.

This year's Christmas purchase is goofy, but it was cheap and I won't regret owning it. It's a copy of Otto Eisenschiml's In the Shadow of Lincoln's Death.

A little background on Eisenschiml: he was a chemist who decided to be a historian, who almost single-handedly created the "conspiracy theory" hysteria surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. His research is flawed, his narratives full of speculation and confabulation, and his theories are utterly priceless. What's more, people believed them for years! Though nowadays Eisenschiml has been relegated to a position of near-infamy in Lincoln and Booth scholarship, he's impossible to ignore in the grand scheme of contextualizing America's fascination with the assassination.


My edition is from 1940 and signed in neat blue ink: "Presented for my little friend Danny Coleman with my very best wishes, Otto Eisenschiml ~ April, 1953." It has a dust jacket, albeit a little torn (nevertheless always hard to come by with a book so old). The seller also sent me a February 1960 section of Reader's Digest which features Theodore Roscoe's The Web of Conspiracy, which is just too funny.

This book is neither rare, nor particularly valuable, but I had been wanting cheap copies of Eisenschiml's works for a long while and now I have this one and Why was Lincoln Murdered (his first book, which I found this past summer). The fact that this latest addition is signed just makes it all the more delightful.


And yes, it also reminds me that I maybe want to get In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy back on my desk in some fashion for the New Year.

from LookingLand.com

Nucleus LiveJournal Plugin © Evgeny Lykhin

in a bid to unearth the most impossibly obscure documents ever summoned at this particular liberry, i am attempting to get my hands on this little bit of bizarre (innerliberry loan has been good to me so far!). it would be very interesting just in terms of asylum care in the 1880s, let alone that mitchell and hartranft were on the commission that slopped it together. prolly dry as coprolite, but hey, i've read weirder/worse.

exhibit A:

Hartranft, John F., Richard C. McMurtrie, Joseph A. Reed, S. Weir Mitchell, Joseph T. Rothrock, L. Clarke Davis, and George L. Harrison. Report from the Commission to Examine into the Present System for the Care of the Insane of the State, etc. Philadelphia: The Commission, 1883.

it would have never even occurred to me in a million years, in spite of the fact that both of these men are pennsylvanians, that they would ever be on a commission for anything together.

i have not pursued much on the matter of hartranft's post-gubernatorial position as a warden for crazy people. it's sort of out of the range of my interest in hartranft. but i might get interested. especially since steers is ruining my other angles (kidding).



for my own amusement, this is an insane asylum
from Mr. Hanty's hometown.
i don't believe he ever worked here.

you know that sense: stuck in deep waters and going nowhere fast?

i keep meaning to update this journal with interesting things on days when it isn't an update day for Reconstruction, but it never seems to happen.

i guess it's because i'm fairly busy and don't have much to share. and i'm out of the habit of writing blog posts. it was easy to ramble endlessly about the assassination project because there was always some new resource to talk about and it never bothered me to blither on the subject because i don't feel proprietary about the material ~ it's history. my other writing projects, i feel proprietary about, so i'm less inclined to discuss them.

part of it too, is that i'm just not the least bit sure what i am doing with any of it. like all of my other online ventures, the Reconstruction webcomic amuses me. it gives me a chance to doodle, play with the paints, etc. but i don't think of it as "serious" work. or that it's going anywhere. this has to be evident in the fact that i approached the endeavor without any really organized thought as to how to make it work, etc. just sort of jumped in willy-nilly.

hard to un-willy-nilly something that's off to a haphazard start. and that leaves me, as usual, feeling rudderless. i have such a sense of what i want to do with my time and my creative energies, but i can't for the life of me get into a rhythm with any of it.



the picture of the day is a bit of romance, i suppose. i love the detail of it. i found it in a gallery of felaries65's which was posted to victorianlife. i've been thinking a lot about 19th century clothing lately. i had meant to do a lot of paper dolls this year, but haven't really accomplished that.

clearly i need to get back on some sort of schedule. my creative life is such a derailment, it seems. hence, this aimless post.

: o p

just ain't updating like she use to...i've been busy elsewhere, i s'pose. and inattentive to my flist (geh ~ sorry).

yesterday, i got in the mail a cheap copy of Eisenschiml's Why was Lincoln Murdered? i didn't want a paperback reprint and i didn't want to pay $20-30 for it, so i found a copy on eBay for $4 which was great. of course, it's what $4 will get you in an Eisenschiml these days. it's about as good as my copy of Weichmann's drivel, which is to say it's a readable piece of junk that's still all in one piece but wouldn't win any beauty prizes. that's about what i need. Eisenchiml is, sadly, almost relegated to the same fire-pile as Gutteridge these days, but given that it is the grandfather of all conspiracy theories, i think it's worth reading. i have a soft spot, too, for it, because i am pretty sure it's one of the first Lincoln conspiracy books i ever read (hopelessly warping my perceptions for many years, alas). as Burkhimer says in 100 Essential Lincoln Books: Eisenschiml "is both influential and incredibly bad at the same time." what's not to love?

unfortunately, it's not in the public domain, so i can't just cannibalize it like a lot of other sources i am using. but i am considering creating a hysterical conspiracy theorist-historian character to wreck havoc in the meta-theatrical layer of the world i am trying to create (based on Eisenschiml and maybe one or two other serious fruit loops). he can hang out and play poker with Washington in Carrera.


"The past is so often unknowable
not because it is befogged now
but because it was befogged then, too,
back when it was still the present.
If we had been there listening,
we still might not have been able
to determine exactly what Stanton said.
All we know for sure is that
everyone was weeping,
and the room was full."

meanwhile, here's a great article about Czar NastyOwlFace's epitaph at Lincoln's deathbed from the New Yorker Angels and Ages: Lincoln’s language and its legacy by Adam Gopnik. this is for those of you obsessed with the sort of minutiae that makes history so bizarrely compelling.

i have been contemplating the wonder that is Edwin Forrest's hair. mostly because, in an era sans mousse and hair gel and various other "product", it is quite the tower of achievement.

also because it's more interesting than anything i have going on personally. don't believe me? take a look for yourself!


anyway, here's the deal. i started out the new year making a big important proclamation to the effect that i would not be making any big important proclamations this year: that i would just stick to my guns, go with the flow, and finish something, even if it was, to my thinking, mediocre.

but oh what a foolish wretched mortal i am. the intensity with which i have been focused on In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy has once again burned me to a crispy soulless husk. i made definite progress with it, but it's clear by the way i have stalled out since last week that i cannot get much farther at the moment. it's just too many details to try to keep track of for my wee, atrophying brain. every time i read the transcripts, i just get dizzy at the thought of trying to adapt them. so much so that i actually considered saying: ah screw it, i won't try to shape anything out of it, i'll just take Poore's transcript and use it entirely (yeah, all 1200 pages of it). immediately upon which one of my few remaining lively synapses sporked itself to death in desperate, horrified protest.

so you can see why Edwin Forrest's hair is so phenomenally interesting. no?

well here's the deal (always a deal, right?): i don't feel like i can quit with everything i have going on right now. Reconstruction updates today (it being monday and all), and i have about two weeks worth of pages left on the buffer before i run out (gah!). i have had a mighty battle this weekend with trying to decide whether to press on with it (at least to finish this one section), but it seems a long way to go ~ and it is. so i haven't made any decisions about it. what may happen is that i switch the style of the artwork midway through (to the annoyance of all). having written the dang thing about 80 times now, i wonder at the wisdom of rewriting it and adapting it into a new medium like this. it may well be the definition of crazy.

i leave you with death in cavalry boots, contemplating the absurdity of it all. my brother drew this last night because he wanted to draw death being contemplative and i said: put boots on him.

so there you have it. i love his knobby knees.