Polish up your bathtub, oil the wheels: Millard Fillmore’s birthday next Monday, January 7

Check out your bathtub to be sure it’s in top running order for the bathtub races.

1938 U.S. postage stamp of Millard Fillmore. It’s a 13-cent stamp; Fillmore was the 13th president. Photo: Wikipedia

Millard Fillmore’s birthday anniversary is coming Monday, January 7.  He would have been 213 years old.  He’d also have been reading a book, and he’d probably be very cranky.

More:

• An Interview with Professor Donald Elder: The Presidents of the United States of America (educationviews.org)

Bathtub myth still haunts the ghost of Millard Fillmore

Presidents Day this year brought out columns and commentary in newspapers and other media across the country, with trivia about presidents.

Millard Fillmore in a daguerreotype by Matthew Brady in March, 1849, in a sitting at the U.S. Capitol. In 1849 the presidential inauguration took place in March — this may be a photo taken on inauguration day, but almost certainly when Fillmore was Vice President. Wikipedia image

What did we learn?  We learned that the old hoax, that Millard Fillmore put the first bathtub in the White House, still stands strong.  The ghost of H. L. Mencken, the guy who started the hoax, high-tails it to the nearest hotel bar for a beer; the ghost of Santayana smiles and shakes its head.  Fillmore’s ghost looks around for a good book to read.

Did one of the wires services run a story on the trivia that reporters picked up?

In the Diamond Bar (California) Patch, in a column of presidents trivia, editor Catherine Garcia reported:

• Millard Fillmore installed the first bathtub and kitchen stove in the White House.

In that version of history, presidents were both dirty and hungry from 1801 to 1850, I suppose.

In the Quincy (Illinois) Herald-Whig, Steve Eighinger seconded the error:

º For some reason, Millard Fillmore, the 13th president, has been the butt of a lot of jokes over the years and I don’t know why. The guy seems pretty upstanding. When Fillmore moved into the White House, it didn’t have a Bible, so he corrected that oversight. He and his wife, Abigail, installed the first library at the White House, plus the first bathtub and kitchen stove. Fillmore could not read Latin and refused an honorary degree from Oxford University, saying a person shouldn’t accept a degree he could not read. (So how did the first 12 presidents take a bath?)

Give Mr. Eighinger credit.  In that parenthetical question, he begins to see the problems with the story, the hoax Mencken wrote.  Too bad he didn’t chase it down.

Yes, the Fillmores installed the first library in the White House — though it was more out of their love of books than a lack of a Bible.  And they updated the kitchen, but certainly someone had some sort of stove to cook on prior to 1850.

Punditty (a nome de plume, I hope) got the facts right at AllVoices:

13. Millard Fillmore wasn’t really the first president to have a bathtub installed in the White House. The actual answer is more complicated. See the link below under “Additional Sources.” He was, however, a member of three political parties during his lifetime: Anti-Masonic (1828-1832); Whig (1832-1856, including his presidency of 1850-53); and American (1856-1860).

I didn’t find the link to “Additional Sources.”  Perhaps the author referred to the notes under the Wikipedia article on Fillmore, which was linked from the site.  You should remember that the “American Party” to which Fillmore belonged, and on whose ticket he ran for the presidency in 1856, was also known as the “Know-Nothing Party.”

How many other newspapers carried the hoax in the past week, that my news hounds did not find?

Even in 1952, when President Harry Truman told the hoax, there was general knowledge that the story was false.  Why does it still circulate, 95 years after Mencken invented it?

When did the first plumbed bathtub go into the White House, and who was president at the time?

Remembering Millard Fillmore on his birthday

Millard Fillmore was born January 7, 1800. Had he lived, Millard Fillmore would be 209 years old today, and probably very cranky.

Millard Fillmore, official portrait - WhiteHouseHistory.org; 1857, by George P. A. Healy

Would you blame him?  He opened Japan to trade.  He got from Mexico the land necessary to make Los Angeles a great world city and the Southern Pacific a great railroad, without firing a shot.  Fillmore promoted economic development of the Mississippi River.  He managed to keep a fractious nation together despite itself for another three years.  Fillmore let end the practice of presidents using slaves to staff the White House (then called “the President’s Mansion”).

Then in 1852 his own party refused to nominate him for a full term, making him the last Whig to be president.  And to add insult to ignominy, H. L. Mencken falsely accused him of being known only for adding a bathtub to the White House, something he didn’t do.

As Antony said of Caesar, the good was interred with his bones — but Millard Fillmore doesn’t even get credit for whatever evil he might have done:  Fillmore is remembered most for being the butt of a hoax gone awry, committed years after his death.  Or worse, he’s misremembered for what the hoax alleged he did.

Even beneficiaries of his help promoting the Mississippi River have taken his name off their annual celebration of the event.  Fillmore has been eclipsed, even in mediocrity (is there still a Millard Fillmore Society in Washington?).

Happy birthday, Millard Fillmore.

The Buffalo News, in the town Fillmore loved and worked to make great, said this morning:

Today is Millard Fillmore’s 209th birthday. Every year we vow to join those hardy folks from the University at Buffalo for their birthday observance at the monument to the 13th President on his grave in Section F in Forest Lawn. And every year the weather convinces us to stay inside. If you want to brave it, it starts at 10 a.m. There’s a reception in the chapel after the ceremony.

I’m in Dallas.  You won’t see me there.

All the living presidents meet today in the White House.  Will they toast Fillmore?

Millard Fillmore was a man of great civic spirit, a man who answered the call to serve even when most others couldn’t hear it at all.  He was a successful lawyer, despite having had only six months of formal education (a tribute to non-high school graduates and lifelong learning).  Unable to save the Union, he established the University of Buffalo and the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.  And, it is said of him, that Queen Victoria said he was the most handsome man she had ever met.

A guy like that deserves a toast, don’t you think?

Resources:

• Gateway to Millard Fillmore history at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
• Millard Fillmore Papers, volume 1, edited by Frank H. Severance, secretary of the Buffalo Historical Society, 1907. Also, the index to both volumes; Table of contents. From Cornell University Library’s collection, New York State Historical Literature. This volume contains the autobiography Millard Fillmore did not finish, but which contains the only serious treatment of his youth, including the story of how he threatened to kill the first man to whom he was apprenticed as a wool carder. Particularly for those elementary and junior high school students looking for stories of presidents’ youth, this is the most authoritative account.
• Millard Fillmore Papers, volume 2, edited by Frank H. Severance, secretary of the Buffalo Historical Society, 1907. Also, the index to both volumes; Table of contents. From Cornell University Library’s collection, New York State Historical Literature.
• The Gospel of Millard Fillmore, a sermon by a Unitarian minister with a solid narrative and a view to redeem the reputation of Fillmore
• Looking for Millard Fillmore, a post at American President’s Blog, listing resources on Fillmore.
• Gateway to Fillmore sources at Electratig
• Resources on Millard Fillmore from the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia
• Fillmore entry at WhiteHouse.gov
• MFB entry on Fillmore’s Birthday, 2008;  also here; 2007 entry here
• Did Fillmore actually say that?