The article discusses the friendship and creative talents of two congressmen, Henry Bedinger and Alexander Boteler, in the mid-19th century. Bedinger, who became the first American ambassador to Denmark in the 1850s, was a poet, while Boteler, who preceded him as a congressman for the area, had a love for drawing and painting. Boteler was descended from Charles Willson Peale, a famous portrait painter who had painted General Washington. As a student at Princeton, Boteler once threw a farmer into water to copy his expression of terror, which resulted in the man’s accidental drowning. However, Boteler’s meeting with Helen Stockton inspired him out of his gloom. Once married, he enjoyed getting together with Bedinger and their families. In 1852, Boteler suffered a costly miscalculation and was called upon to pay nearly twenty thousand dollars in debt. This may have influenced him to enter the field of elected office, serving in Bedinger’s old Congressional seat from early 1859 to just before the Civil War broke out. Boteler created a cartoon of Charles Harper’s home and apothecary shop and added an ominous quote from Shakespeare’s Henry VI. Bedinger served as a favorite to King Frederick VII in Denmark and was visited by Hans Christian Anderson. He brought back the custom of a decorated Christmas tree to America from Europe, which caught on after Prince Albert and Queen Victoria had one. Bedinger also wrote poetry to cope with his homesickness.
Posted by Jim Surkamp on 2015-03-26 12:48:52