![]() “I think that’s why millions of people found him so endearing because he would make fun of his own appearance. “He himself thought he’d been dealt a poor hand in personal looks, but it never stopped him,” Fox said. “Millions were inspired by Lincoln’s knowing how to overcome the unfortunate hand nature had dealt him,” Fox writes. He was thereby able to overcome what might have been a serious handicap, even turning his gift for comical self-depreciation to his advantage as a political tool. ![]() In his book, Fox explores how Lincoln used his innate gift for humor and storytelling to make light of what everyone concurred was his unfortunate physical frame. “When people used the word grotesque to describe him - and that was an adjective used by friends as well as foes - they meant not hideous, but uncanny or alien.” “During Lincoln’s lifetime, everybody was preoccupied with his looks and that meant his physical appearance, as well as the way he dressed, the way he carried his body,” Fox said. “No, I suppose not,” she said, “but you might stay at home.”Įxamining images, speeches, monuments, Hollywood movies and many other sources, Fox charts the ways Americans have remembered and imagined Lincoln and used his physical presence as a vehicle for evaluating Lincoln’s continuing impact on American culture.ĭuring Lincoln’s lifetime, everybody was preoccupied with his looks and that meant his physical appearance, as well as the way he dressed, the way he carried his body. She stopped in turn and said, “Well, for land sake, you are the homeliest man I ever saw.” While riding a horse through the woods, a man Lincoln described as “not possessed of features the ladies would call handsome” stopped on the path to let a woman rider pass. Speaking to an 1856 convention of newspaper editors in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln told this amusing tale. Norton & Co., 2015), USC history professor Richard Fox recounts an anecdote thought to be a “personal reminiscence” on the part of Honest Abe. In his new book, Lincoln’s Body: A Cultural History (W.W.
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