'No Other Marks or Brands Recollected'

“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, but that was all– I have not been to school since– The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity–” 

A small store of education is all you need to deduce who wrote this rare and modest indulgence in autobiography. Abraham Lincoln’s friend Jesse W. Fell of Bloomington, Ill., had asked him to write a brief self-profile that could be used by newspapers reporting on the leading contenders for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination. Lincoln prepared a draft on this date, December 20, in 1859. Today, we can’t imagine a presidential candidate or other politician humbly admitting the limitations of his formal education. Nor can we imagine a politician writing his own biographical sketch in vivid prose. In “Abraham Lincoln and the Art of the Word,” written for inclusion in Lincoln for the Ages (ed. R.G. Newman, 1960), Marianne Moore writes:

 

“His use of words became a perfected instrument, acquired by an education largely self-attained -- `picked up,’ he said, `under pressure of necessity.’ That the books read became part of him is apparent in phrases influenced by the Bible, Shakespeare, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Burns, Blackstone’s Commentaries; and not least, by some books of Euclid – read and ‘nearly mastered,’ as he says, after he had become a member of Congress. The largeness of the life entered into the writing, as with a passion he strove to persuade his hearers of what he believed, adroit, ingenious mentality framing an art which, if it is not to be designated poetry, we may call a ‘grasp of eternal grace’ – in both senses, figurative and literal.”

 

That a president ranks among our finest writers defies credulity. Recent experience tells us most strain after coherence, let alone gravitas, humor and polish. Here, from the age when many Americans had no idea of their leaders' appearance, Lincoln writes:

 

“If any personal description of me is thought desired desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes — no other marks or brands recollected–”

 

No primping, vanity or Photoshopping of image. Rather, specificity and humility. As Jacques Barzun writes in "Lincoln the Literary Genius" (1960):

“The qualities of Lincoln's literary art--precision, vernacular ease, rhythmical virtuosity, and elegance—may at a century’s remove seem alien to our tastes. Certainly we vehemently promote their opposites: our sensibility cherishes the indistinct. Yet if we consider one continuing strain in our tradition, we cannot without perverseness question the relevance to the present generation of Lincoln’s literary art. His example, plainly, helped to break the monopoly of the dealers in literary plush.”