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79
ing life as a farmer youth in Wisconsin, as a young man interested in politics and newspaper work in that state, and as
an adventurer in California with other “forty-niner’s.”. Returning to Wisconsin in 1851, shortly after the death of his
faaer, Heg, who had been a Democrat, became a Free Soiler
and later a Republican. For service in the Civil War, the
young man raised a Scandinavian regiment which was largely
made up of Norwegians. At thirty-three years of age, he went
to the front as Colonel of this Regiment, the Fifteenth Wisconsin. Both the Colonel and the Regiment played colorful
parts in the conflict and both the letters and the biography
furnish very interesting and profitable reading.
w. 0. L.
A Brief Centennial History of Wabash County is the
title of a pamphlet by President Otho Winger of Manchester
College, which he brought out at North Manchester, Indiana,
in 1935. This narrative of forty-four pages covers the history
of Wabash County from its organization in 1835 to its hundredth anniversary in 1935. The story is enlivened by a number of excellent illustrations. Some space is devoted to the
geography of the country of which the County forms a part,
and some to Indian history, including the story of Frances
Slocum.
The first permanent home erected within the limits of
Wabash County by a white man was that of Samuel McClure.
This was in June, 1827. Soon afterwards, his son, Samuel
McClure, Jr., opened the first store. During the next few
years, settlers flowed into the new area. The town of Wabash
was started in 1834,a year before the county, taking the same
name, was established.
In the few pages at his disposal, President Winger has
told a good story of the development of civilization in a
splendid county of the Wabash Valley. He gives attention to
the history of the city of Wabash and to the growth of other
cities and towns. Into his notices of the several Townships,
he weaves some important facts relating to the economic and
political history of the people. He gives separate treatment
to religion, education, and the professions.
A map of Wabash County occupies one page, and two
special maps are presented on other pages. Some poetry is
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Indiana Magazine of History
added for good measure: “On the Banks of the Wabash,” by
Dresser ; “The Hills o’Somerset,” by Riley ; and “On the Banks
of the Old Mississinewa,” by the Rev. Frank Huston of
Knightstown, Indiana. It is hard to see how more could have
been done by the author in the limited space at his command.
Copies of the pamphlet may be obtained from the author by
writing to him at Manchester College, North Manchester,
Indiana.
Dr. E. V. Wilcox, President of The Shakespeare Society
of Washington, D. C., after reading “Lincoln Knew Shakespeare” by R. Gerald McMurtry, which appeared in our last
issue, sent in the following contribution which will no doubt
interest many of our readers :
By way of supplement to the very interesting article, “Lincoln Knew
Shakespeare,” in the December, 1935, issue of the Zndiana Magazine of
History, it may be worth while to recite another bit of testimony showing Lincoln’s understanding of Shakespeare’s plays. The late Charles
B. Hanford began his long stage career in the company of Edwin Booth
and Lawrence Barrett. He looked upon Booth with a feeling little short
of adoration. Their friendship was reciprocal. Hanford was given opportunities in Shakespearean roles which greatly stimulated the development of his histrionic ability. Later Hanford formed his own company, touring the west and south with a Shakespearean repertory of a
dozen or more plays.
Upon his retirement from active trouping, Hanford came to Washington, but he could never shake off his love for the theater. For several
years, in fact until shortly before his death, he directed the dramatic
work of the Shakespeare Society of Washington in the presentation of
“Julius Caesar,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Merchant of Venice,”
“Othello,” “Anthony and Cleopatra” and other plays. He played various
r6les for the Society, and, in the intervals of rest during rehearsals, he
once related to us the process by which he had inherited the conception
of the part of Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, as he enacted it. It seems that,
on arriving in Washington on one of his regular tours, Edwin Booth
called on Lincoln in the White House. Booth was presenting “Hamlet”
that week. Lincoln remarked that in his opinion the part of Claudius was
always unduly slighted in staging the play, often cut so as to mutilate its
meaning and usually assigned to some tyro o r incompetent actor, as if
Claudius were merely a miserable old villain who should be gotton off
the stage as soon as he had mumbled a few lines.
Lincoln then and there proceeded ,to show exactly what he meant by
speaking and acting the long soliloquy, beginning “Oh, my offense is
rank, it smells to heaven.’’ Booth was so impressed by it that he hurried
back to the theater and taught Hanford how to read the soliloquy of
Claudius a kc Lincoln. In his later life, Hanford read the r61e for the
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81
Shakespeare Society of Washington. The central idea of Lincoln’s conception was that in this soliloquy Claudius was genuinely seeking repentance but found himself too deeply sunk in iniquity to rise out of the mire.
Lincoln’s criticism of the ordinary rendering of the passage was that
the actor read the lines too casually or theatrically, or at least without
the required tragic earnestness.
Needless to say if Lincoln’s reading of the soliloquy impressed
Booth as the best he had ever heard, it must have been effective indeed.
According to Hanford, the point that chiefly surprised and interested
Booth was not that Lincoln enjoyed Shakespeare and found time to read
some of his dramas in the intervals of a busy life, but that he had
memorized many of the great speeches and soliloquies in “Hamlet,”
“Macbeth,” “Othello,” “King John,” “Richard 11,” “Henry IV” and others
and, what is much more, had so completely mastered their meaning that
he could enact them with the fervor and dramatic feeling of the consummate artist.
E. V. Wilcox.