'He Was Not A Pretty Man By Any Means'

Sixth of 45 excerpts from Lincoln by David Herbert Donald:

After his [1846] election victory Lincoln could relax. . . . A daguerreotype made about this time -- his first photographic likeness -- showed a young congressman well satisfied with himself. In his best suit he sat stiffly for the photographer, obviously proud of his tailor-made clothing, his carefully buttoned satin waistcoat, his stiff, starched shifrt with gold studs, his intricately knotted black tie. Because of photographic distortion his hands appeared even more enormous than they actually were, but it was not the daguerreotypist's fault that his chest looked thin and his head too small for such a large body.

"He was not a pretty man by any means -- nor was he an ugly one," wrote [William H.] Herndon, who left the most vivid description of his partner's appearance.; "he was a homely looking man." At the time Lincoln weighed about 160 pounds, and he was so thin that he appeared even taller than six feet, four inches. His height, as Herndon pointed out, was due to the abnormal length of his legs. "In sitting down in common chairs," Herndon observed, "he was no taller than ordinary men from the chair to the crown of his head. A marble placed on his knee thus sitting would roll hipward, down an inclined plane . . . It was only when he stood up that he loomed above other men."

. . . For all Herndon's detail, he failed quite to capture the feeling conveyed by that 1846 daguerreotype. Because a sitter had to hold a pose for several seconds without moving, it showed Lincoln's face as grave and unsmiling, but it managed to convey a sense of a man who had attained his goals. No longer was he attempting to impose the rule of reason upon impassioned emotions; no longer was he afflicted by swings of mood that went from Napoleonic ambition to deep melacholy. He was at peace with himself.