I suppose most people would be tempted to label the Robert Todd Lincoln as a "Jonah. See, according to chapter ten in the Qur'an, God gave Jonah a dangerous job, and to avoid the assignment he jumped ship for someplace else. According to the Hebrew Book of Jonah, God then sent a terrible storm to swamp the boat. And for some reason, Jonah chose that moment to confesses his sin to the the terrified crew, who, after a few seconds of theological discussion, throw the wayward prophet overboard.
In the New Testament Gospel of Mathew Jonah is then swallowed by "a great fish", where he spends three days and nights, until he apologizes. God then causes the fish to regurgitate Jonah, naked on a sand bar. And now you know why Christians, Jews and Muslims have spent the last 2,000 years slaughtering each other - because they share so many stories like this one, which differ only in tiny details.
Anyway, a Jonah is somebody you don't want on your boat, or babysitting your 401K. A Jonah is cursed, and he drags his curse around with him, rubbing it off on unsuspecting victims who are drowned because God is actually trying to punch the ticket of the guy in next stateroom. Now, a "shlimazel" is just like a Jonah, except that God is not involved. And think of the very late Robert Lincoln as a "shlimazel" Allow me to explain.
On the day President Abraham Lincoln died, his eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, (above), had just gotten back from the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House. He was late, of course, and when his parents invited Bob to go to the theater with them, Bob begged off and stayed home. He went to bed early and had to be awakened when word arrived that his father had been shot. Bob then had to share his private grief with the grief of millions of strangers. And maybe that was what infected Bob, and turned him into a "shlimazel".
As the son of Abraham, it was inevitable that Bob Lincoln (above) would be drawn into Republican politics, but he resisted as long as he could - late again. He never stood for election, and when President Rutherford B. Hayes offered him the post of Assistant Secretary of State, Bob said “No, thanks”. But, finally in 1881, he accepted the position of Secretary of War under President James Garfield. That job lasted barely six months, because that was only as long as his new boss lasted.
Just after nine on Saturday morning, 2 July, 1881, at the very beginning of another hot, humid Washington three day holiday weekend, Bob Lincoln was pacing around the central waiting room of the Gothic eyesore that was the Potomac and Baltimore railroad station (above).
The late Bob Lincoln (above) was early this morning, I guess because he himself wasn't going anywhere. He was there to log-in a little suck-up time with President Garfield, who was about to board the 9:15 train to Baltimore beginning a two week vacation.
Yes, President James Garfield (above) had only been on the job for about three months, and it might seem a little quick to be taking a vacation, but he was the boss and the rules are different for bosses.
So here was poor Bob, wandering around this cavernous hothouse, pathetically hoping to make some headway against his biggest rival in the cabinet, the even bigger suck up, Secretary of State James Blaine (above), known as the “monumental liar from the state of Maine”. Blaine at this very moment was walking into the station arm and arm with President Garfield.
And that was when Charles Guiteau fired off two rounds of a Bulldog .44 caliber pistol right into Garfield's back.
When Bob heard people shouting that the President had been shot, Bob ran to the President. Once again he was late. He found Garfield lying on the floor of the “Ladies Waiting Room”. Bob and Blaine and Garfield's two sons helped the President to his feet, and escorted him away from the lookey-loos. Here he was examined, and since the wounds did not appear to be life threatening – because he was not already dead - it was decided the President should be taken back to the White House. Bob left him there, and returned to his own holiday weekend.
It had all the makings of an obscure footnote in history, until the doctors showed up. There were sixteen of them, and several of them shoved their dirty fingers into the President's wounds, looking for the bullets. They did not find them, but within a few days Garfield had a raging infection. What finished the poor schmuck off, on 19 September, 1881, was a heart attack, which is what kills you after two months of fever and diarrhea. Bob Lincoln was not at the death bed. He had already done his part.
Bob (above) left government service soon after, He quickly found a well paying job as a lobbyist for the railroads. And it was as President of the Pullman Cars Association when he finally met another President, on Friday, 6 September, 1901.
William McKinley, the third President of the United States to be assassinated, had just been assassinated. Bob raced into the exhibit, in time to see McKinley drop to the floor. He needed to rush, because thanks to the advances in medicine in the intervening quarter of a century since Garfield's murder, McKinley only suffered for eight days, before the doctors helped him to die on 14 September, 1901. Bob Lincoln slinked out of town, determined to avoid contributing to any further bloody historical events.
Whenever it was suggested he might wish to accept another Presidential invitation, Bob (above) responded, “No, I'm not going, and they'd better not ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present.” Perhaps thanks to Bob's thoughtfulness, McKinley would be the last American President to be assassinated until 1963. But it turned out Bob's affliction not only affected Presidents.
Six years later, on Tuesday. 9 August, 1910, Bob and his family boarded the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse (above), in Newark, New Jersey. They were looking forward to a few weeks holiday touring Europe when in the midst of the bon voyage celebrations an angry ex-city worker took a shot at brand new New York City Mayor, William Gaynor – shades of Garfield's shooting!
Mayor Gayner was hit in the throat. And in the famous photograph taken just seconds after the shots were fired (above), the old man in the white hat rushing to assist Mayor Gaynor, is none other than the late Bob Lincoln - and thus we have photographic proof that Bob was a "shlimazel"! The doctors largely left Mayor Gaynor alone, and he did not die of his wounds, until three years later.
The only other public occasion which involved a living President and Bob Lincoln was on Memorial Day, Tuesday, 30 May, 1922. Bob (above, on the right) was 78 years old by then, when he attended the dedication of his father's memorial in Washington, D.C. In fact there were three Presidents present at that ceremony. The fat man, (above left) was Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who had been President in 1911 when he signed the bill authorizing the construction of the Lincoln monument. He survived this close encounter with Bob by another eight years.
Vice President “Silent Cal” Coolidge (above, right) was also there, but he would last another nine years before he died The sitting President at the dedication of the Lincoln memorial was President William G. Harding (above center), who gave a rousing speech at the dedication.
Harding (above) would not die until August of 1923, fifteen months and a day after rubbing shoulders with Bob – which seems like a rather extended time frame for an effective curse.
In fact, Bob Lincoln himself (above) would die sooner than any of his final potential victims. He suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage in the summer of 1926. When he died Bob was the last surviving member of the Garfield cabinet, having outlived his rival James Blaine, who did not even make it out of the nineteenth century (he had died, January 1893) .
Bob Lincoln was also the only man in American history to have been present at the murder of two American Presidents, not to mention his relation to a third - his own farther. Bob was also the only child of Abraham Lincoln to reach adulthood, and to have children of his own.
But sadly his last heir - and thus Abraham Lincoln's last blood relative - Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith - died on Christmas eve, 1985 in a Virginia nursing home. He was Abraham's great-grandson, and Bob's grandson. Now, Bob could not be blamed for his heir's lack of proclivity, nor for any of the other unusual coincidences which marred his life, but neither could they be ignored. To call them bad luck seems a pathetic explanation. To call Bob a Jonah seems over-wrought. I think he was just an innocent "shlimazel". But I still wouldn't want to have lunch with him.
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