The Bixby Letter and Saving Private Ryan

I find it thoroughly enjoyable and highly interesting when separate pleasant events come together by accident, and certainly without planning on my part. I recently had just such an experience. 

I watched a movie on TV and a day later read a review of four new books on the life of John Hay, President Lincoln’s presidential secretary and later ambassador to European courts and Secretary of State.

I viewed “Saving Private Ryan” on one of those TV channels which show movies without commercial interruptions. A pleasurable experience despite having seen the movie years ago in a theatre. 

The early part of the movie is getting the Rangers led by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) off Omaha Beach on D-Day. The story moves on to the catastrophic news that a mother in Idaho is about to be notified three of her four sons have been killed in combat. A fourth is somewhere in Normandy. 

General George C.Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, orders a search for the fourth son and to “get him to hell out of there.” In explaining his order to staffers who brought him the news of the Ryan family, General Marshall quotes from a letter President Lincoln sent to a Mrs. Bixby of Boston who was thought to have lost five sons (it later turned out to be two) during the Civil War. 

The Bixby letter was an expression by the President of how inadequate words and feelings are to console the mother in such an overwhelming loss. It is the type of letter history and our imaginations let us accept Lincoln would have written. 

It now turns out that Lincoln was not the author of the letter; it was written by John Hay, considered to be “the stylish” writer on Lincoln’s staff, with the “pen of a poet.” 

Four new books on the life of this literary scholar, lawyer, presidential ghostwriter, and longtime cabinet member, are reviewed in depth by Christopher Benfey, Mellon Professor in English at Mount Holyoke College, in The New York Review of Books (March 8, 2018).

I am indebted to Professor Benfey and the authors of the reviewed books for this fascinating background which played an important part in the development of the storyline of Stephen Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” and for the pleasant surprise of watching a movie and shortly thereafter learning a bit of the history of what makes the movie work.

So many books, so little time

About six years ago Google counted the books in the world and come up with 129 million plus. This figure has been updated by others, not entirely scientifically, to more than 134 million and counting.

An average person reads 200-300 words per minute. At this rate, someone (with math skills greater than mine) has calculated it would take 60,000 years to read every book currently catalogued in the Library of Congress.

Nobody has that kind of time. Certainly not me. I have other things to do. So I compensate. 

I read book reviews and familiarize myself with at least what the editors of The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books and the The New York Times Sunday Book Review section, think is worth reviewing and possibly reading. Also ads in these publications are often a good source of of information for new books. 

In 2013, more than 300,000 books were published in the United States. Assuming that number remained steady in the ensuing years, selecting those to be reviewed is a formidable, awesome and challenging task.

During the 1980’s and 1990’s, I reviewed books for the Sunday edition of The State in Columbia, S.C. The office of the editor over-flowed with books stacked in open bookcases, on the floor and still in unopened packages. I can only imagine what a corresponding office must look like in New York and London. 

At this point in my life I prefer to devote my reading to non-fiction works, concentrating on memoirs, and books on world affairs and international issues. I do make one exception: Alan Furst, an American author of fifteen historical spy novels dealing with the period 1938 to the late forties. His is the last book I could not put down. 

What do you like to read? I would be interested in hearing from you. Send comments to: arch@archibald99.com.

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