Lincoln's Briefs by Wayne Michael

Author:Wayne, Michael [Wayne, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771802895
Publisher: Iguana Books
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

XXX

And so Bobbi Jo Jackson went off to meet with René Purelaine while Yale Templeton and Louis Montcalm sat down over coffee in La famine Irlandaise.

“I must say, this is the best instant coffee I have ever tasted,” remarked Yale Templeton, who in fact had never tasted instant coffee before (and very little freshly brewed either, coffee being one of the lesser temptations his mother had warned him about). He always made it a rule to be polite, however, and in any case he found the beverage to be a suitable accompaniment for cold boiled potatoes.

“But we must not waste our time talking about something as mundane as food,” said Louis. “Tell me, monsieur, what is your occupation?”

“I am a historian,” replied Yale Templeton.

“Ah,” said Louis, “a historian. Herodotus, Thucydides, Sima Qian, Ibn Khaldun, Gibbon, Carlyle, Ranke, Burckhardt, Bloch, Braudel. You have many distinguished predecessors. It is a noble profession. And what is your particular field of study? The history of England, I suppose.”

“No,” replied Yale Templeton. “American history.”

“American history!” exclaimed Louis. “But the United States is too young to have a history.”

“Many of the dons I knew at Cambridge seemed to think the same thing,” Yale Templeton commented a bit ruefully.

Louis laughed. “Then they are fools. If anything, the Americans have experienced too much history. And of course, they have produced eminent scholars of their own: Prescott, Bancroft, Parkman, Turner, Beard, Schlesinger, Woodward …”

“You seem to know a great deal about American history for someone from Canada.”

“It is a necessity, monsieur. Living as I do in a nation whose continued existence depends on the sufferance of the United States, I must understand Americans better than they understand themselves. Which turns out to be not all that difficult. I mean, just look at the politicians they elect to office. Of course there are moments when even Americans make an inspired choice. Lincoln was truly a statesman of the highest order and a man of great compassion. I’ve always felt he would have made a fine Canadian. But enough of my foolishness. You’re the professional historian. Tell me. What is your opinion of the United States?”

“Actually,” said Yale Templeton, who had concluded long ago that opinion had no place in history, “my field of specialization is the Civil War.”

“Ah, yes. What else? The Civil War. Brother against brother. The most colossal of all the many American acts of insanity.”

Yale Templeton always found generalizations distasteful, generalizations expressed with great passion especially so. And in an effort to drain emotion from their conversation, he entered into a monologue about his research. He described to Louis the work he had done for his doctoral dissertation, discussing in painstaking detail what he regarded as the more interesting facts and statistics he had managed to uncover about the Civil War in the British press. He then went on to give a lengthy account of how he had realized that to be fully comprehensive, he would have to expand his investigation into ever more obscure British publications.

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