Джон Апдайк - Memories of the Ford Administration

I might make another, but, from the misrepresentations which must have been made to you, I am almost afraid. I would like to follow her remains to the grave as a mourner. I would like to convince the world, and I hope yet to convince you, that she was infinitely dearer to me than life. I may sustain the shock of her death, but I feel that happiness has fled from me forever. The prayer which I make to God without ceasing is, that I yet may be able to show my veneration for the memory of my dear departed saint, by my respect and attachment for her surviving friends.

May Heaven bless you, and enable you to bear the shock with the fortitude of a Christian.

I am, forever, your sincere and grateful friend,

This letter was sent by messenger and refused at the door. Unopened, it found its way into what Curtis ceremoniously calls the private depositaries at Wheatland; thus it escaped the fire Buchanan’s executors submissively imposed upon his other preserved memorabilia of the unhappy Ann Coleman affair [see this page — this page]. Our impression upon reading this heartbroken effusion is not entirely favorable; there are too many dear s in it, and rather too political a wish to convince the world , by marching in her funeral train. It is, however, a Romeo’s lament compared with the other supposed document from Buchanan’s pen in these thunderstruck days, an obituary that appeared in the Lancaster Journal on December 11th:

Departed this life, on Thursday morning last, in the twenty-third year of her age, while on a visit to her friends in the city of Philadelphia, Miss Anne C. Coleman, daughter of Robert Coleman, Esquire, of this city. It rarely falls to our lot to shed a tear over the mortal remains of one so much and so deservedly beloved as was the deceased. She was everything which the fondest parents or fondest friend could have wished her to be. Although she was young and beautiful, and accomplished, and the smiles of fortune shone upon her, yet her native modesty and worth made her unconscious of her own attractions. Her heart was the seat of all the softer virtues which ennoble and dignify the character of woman. She has now gone to a world where in the bosom of her God she will be happy with congenial spirits. May the memory of her virtues be ever green in the hearts of her surviving friends. May her mild spirit, which on earth still breathes peace and good-will, be their guardian angel to preserve them from the faults to which she was ever a stranger —

The quotation, in its curious double quotation marks, is unattributed but comes from Young’s much-loved Night Thoughts (comp. 1742–45). The printer’s devil from the Journal ’s office, sent for the copy, recalled finding Buchanan so disturbed by grief that he was unable to write the notice . Lancaster in the wake of Ann [5] The obituary says “Anne,” but the tombstone has it “Ann.” I have chosen the name writ in stone. Coleman’s death was swept by talk of her suicide and of Buchanan’s culpability: I believe that her friends now look upon him as her Murderer , Hannah Cochran wrote to her husband on December 14th. Buchanan had taken refuge with Judge Walter Franklin, whom he had three times defended from impeachment, and who, in this fiercely small world, lived next to the Colemans’ house on East King Street. Some think that Franklin wrote the obituary, Buchanan being too disturbed by grief . There is a florid touch to it, an upward reach, which does not seem quite like our earthbound hero, his imagination flattened like the “J” of his unvarying signature. In the obituary’s notion that for all the smiles of fortune her native modesty made her unconscious of her own attractions , something actual in the case strives to break through; Curtis, who knew people who knew Ann, says that she was described to him as a very beautiful girl, of singularly attractive and gentle disposition, but retiring and sensitive . She was shy; was she also, as the Pennsylvania Dutch put it, “queer,” that is, anti-social? We can no more easily conceive of Ann happy with congenial spirits in the bosom of God than Ann happy among the bucolic busybodies of old Lancaster. She resists, in the mind’s eye, community. In the portrait of her that hangs in Buchanan’s bedroom at Wheatland, her long nose seems willful, her wide stare not inviting, her one stray curl a touch distraught. Those born rich are harder to please than those born poor; Buchanan all his long life acted delighted to be here, here in this vale of tears, a born crony and ballroom flirt, tickled to be consorting with his fellow mortals, be they the Czarina of Russia or the black barber in Lancaster who pronounced in eulogy, Why, sir, he didn’t know what it was to give a rough answer to man, woman, or child . A humble pleasure in human society: it is an absurdity that tends to promote life, like a belief in God. Buchanan had it, and Ann didn’t; in this they were like the fish and the bird of the fable who fell in love.

Hannah Cochran, in the same letter in which she reported that Buchanan was being called Murderer , tells her husband, After Mr. Buchanan was denied his requests, he secluded himself for a few days and then sallied forth as bold as ever. It is now thought that this affair will lessen his Consequence in Lancaster as he is the whole conversation of the town . However, he soon left town, presumably finding refuge with his family in Mercersburg; in a letter of December 20, 1819, Amos Ellmaker wrote him to speak of the awful visitation of Providence that has fallen upon you, and how deeply I feel it. The thought of your situation has scarcely been absent from my mind ten days. I trust your restoration to your philosophy and courage, and to the elasticity of spirits natural to most young men. Yet time, the sovereign cure of all these, must intervene before much good can be done. The sun will shine again — though a man enveloped in gloom always thinks the darkness is to be eternal. Do you remember the Spanish anecdote? A lady, who had lost a favorite child, remained for months sunk in sullen sorrow and despair. Her confessor, one morning, visited her, and found her, as usual, immersed in gloom and grief. “What!” says he; “have you not forgiven God Almighty?” She rose, exerted herself, joined the world again, and became useful to herself and friends . Ellmaker went on to advise, I say to give full vent and unrestrained license to the feelings and thoughts natural in the case for a time — which time may be a week, two weeks, three weeks, as nature dictates — without scarcely a small effort during that time to rise above the misfortune; then, when this time is past, to rouse, to banish depressing thoughts, as far as possible, and engage most industriously in business .

For the elections of 1820, the Federalists of Lancaster needed a candidate for the national Congress, and settled on Buchanan. Years later, in London, conversing with Samuel L. M. Barlow, the same who was to advise Curtis to suppress most of what he knew about the Coleman event, Buchanan gave his willingness to run a coloring of diffidence and personal need: I never intended to engage in politics, but meant to follow my profession strictly. But my prospects and plans were all changed by a most sad event which happened at Lancaster when I was a young man. As a distraction from my great grief, and because I saw that through a political following I could secure the friends I then needed, I accepted a nomination . Yet he conducted the campaign with vigor enough to win this ugly chastisement in a published letter signed “Colebrook,” in allusion to his recent tragedy if not in actual identification of one of Ann’s brothers: Allow me to congratulate you upon the notoriety you have acquired of late. Formerly the smoothness of your looks and your habitual professions of moderation had led those who did not know you to suppose you mild & temperate .