Old Andrew

Last week I read a book review that brought back such disturbing memories that I wanted to run home and pull the covers over my head. This book brought back one of those humiliating moments when I was forced to face the fact that I’m not really as smart or well-read as I like to think I am.
One frigid early January day when I worked at the Denison library, an older woman, a farm-wife who only came into town for library books and livestock feed approached me at the front desk. She had a list of ten or so book titles. She handed it to me and asked if I could find these books somewhere or other and borrow them through the state interlibrary loan program. I replied that I would do my best. The books were mostly fifty to one hundred years old and a little difficult to acquire. When the first one arrived, she came in promptly to pick it up.
“Oh, I’m so excited to get started on this” she said. “You see, I decided to study up on Andrew Jackson’s cabinet as my winter project.” Andrew Jackson’s cabinet? That type of intellectual curiosity just leaves me dumbfounded. I could (maybe) tell you in what century Jackson lived, but nothing else I ever learned about him comes to mind.
This new book is A Being So Gentle: The Frontier Love Story of Rachel and Andrew Jackson. Now that’s a title that catches my eye! It was enough of a clue to Jackson’s life that I googled him and read a short internet encyclopedia biography. Rachel and Andy were rather “free thinkers” of their day. The fact that they married while Rachel was still married to another man was quite the scandal. Eventually she was persuaded to obtain the first divorce in the (young) history of the state of Kentucky and remarry Jackson in a legitimate ceremony. Jackson fought thirteen duels, several over his wife’s honor. Charles Dickinson was the only man he ever killed in a duel, but not before Dickinson shot him near the heart. It was said about Jackson that he was shot so frequently in duels that he “rattled like a bag of marbles.”
Jackson was heartbroken when his beloved Rachel died a few weeks before he took office. He wrote the following inscription for her tombstone:
"Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson, who died the 22d of December, 1828, aged 61. Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, and her heart kind; she was delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and yet so virtuous, slander might wound but could not dishonor. Even death, when he tore her from the arms of her husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her God."
So, when it comes in, I’ll read that book, and perhaps feel a little more confident in my knowledge of Andrew Jackson. However, I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from hearing my younger sister say recently “I just read the best biography of Genghis Khan.”