Dickinson & Lincoln

Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request) was a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln.

Over Presidents' Day Weekend, the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op Laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard) will host a special exhibit on the friendship between Dickinson & Lincoln.

Lincoln and Dickinson were drinking buddies, and they would frequent bars when they worked together at a theater in Baltimore. Lincoln later paid homage to Dickinson in the Gettysburg Address by referencing a favorite quip of Dickinson’s when he’d strike out at a bar with a babe: “Four beers & seven scores ago….”

Neil Patrick Harris played Emmett Lee DIckinson in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.

A little known fact is that Emmett Lee Dickinson introduced "Miss. Mary Todd of Kentucky" to Abraham Lincoln (after she passed out drunk in a bank of boxwoods during a late night Corn Boil). Qwerty Jean Dickinson, Emmett Lee's daughter, later published a children's story about the encounter (pictured at the left). One of the few surviving copies is on display at the museum. For details on the Lincoln-Todd introduction, see Great American Poems – REPOEMED, Volume 2.

A highlight of the exhibit is the recreation of two rooms from the White House: the Lincoln Bedroom (above left) AND the Dickinson Bedroom (above right). Elvis Presley once visited the White House and stayed in the Dickinson Bedroom. He loved the room so much that he patterned the Media Room at his home, Graceland, after it.

Ernest Hemingway was fascinated by Dickinson's friendship with Lincoln. He wrote about it in an early work entitled The Old Man and D.C. (pictured at the left). He based his later novel The Old Man and the Sea (pictured on the right) on his earlier work. Santiago, the aging fisherman in the book, represents Emmett Lee Dickinson, and the great fish symbolizes Lincoln.

More on The Old Man and D.C. is HERE.

More on Dickinson & Lincoln is HERE.