Why do more? What was there to be had? Mr. McClure insisted that there was plenty if one searched.
I went to talk it over with John Nicolay, who as well as his fine daughter Helen was an honored member of the famous old Washington Literary Society where I was a frequent guest. I told him what Mr. McClure proposed. Did he not have something he could give me? He was emphatic in saying there was nothing of importance to be had. The collection of letters and speeches he and Mr. Hay had made was complete; they had told all there was worth telling of Lincoln’s life. He would advise me not to touch so hopeless an assignment. I think Mr. Nicolay never quite forgave me for going ahead. Later when the results of my search began to appear and gradually to shape themselves into a Life of Lincoln he came to me one evening to protest. “You are invading my field. You write a popular Life of Lincoln and you do just so much to decrease the value of my property.”
I was deeply distressed. He thought me a poacher. I told him I believed he was mistaken. I pleaded that if I could write anything which people would read I was making readers for him. To know a little of Lincoln was for the serious a desire to know more. He and Mr. Hay had written something that all students must have. I could never hope to make an essential lasting contribution. But he went away unconvinced.
Mr. Nicolay’s point of view, if not generous, was certainly honest. I understand it better now than I did then. He had lived through the great years of the Civil War always at Lincoln’s elbow. He had been the stern, careful, humorless guardian of a man who carried his mail in his hat and a laugh on his lips. His reverence for him was a religion. He had given years of conscientious hard labor to the editing of the “Complete Works” and the writing of the history, and now he was retired. Lincoln was his whole life. We all come to rest our case on the work to which we have given our best years, frequently come to live on that, so to speak. When the time comes that our field is invaded by new workers, enlarged, reshaped, made to yield new fruit, we suffer shock. We may put up a “No trespassing” sign, but all to no use.
Mr. Nicolay’s tragedy was in not having found a fresh field. How different it was with his colleague John Hay, whose secretaryship with Lincoln had been an episode in a diplomatic career of unusual distinction and usefulness! In 1894 everybody recognized that he had a greater future before him. His part in the Life of Lincoln had been but one of many contributions to the literature of his day. His social circle was the choicest, and he was rich. Hay had everything; Nicolay, only Lincoln, and he looked on all who touched his field as invaders.