Word: trippe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Lincoln was by most accounts difficult to know; he struggled with depression and appeared more comfortable around men than women. But Tripp, who worked with Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s and died in 2003 two weeks after turning in his manuscript, sniffs out sexuality in the most innocuous exchanges, such as an 1841 letter from Lincoln to Speed after the latter moved to Kentucky. "It begins without a single personal item," Tripp recounts, "but drones on in a 1,575-word account of a local murder trial. Hard to find anything less personal than that, yet it is precisely this...
...another instance, Tripp uncovers an excerpt from the diary of Virginia Woodbury Fox, a Washington socialite during Lincoln's day. Writing of rumors that Lincoln and Derickson slumbered together in the White House, Fox exclaims, "What Stuff!" To Tripp, the comment denotes shock at Lincoln's behavior, but it could just as easily be construed as disgust at hearsay...
...Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (Free Press; 295 pages) sex researcher C.A. Tripp argues that the four years Lincoln slept in the same bed with his friend Joshua Speed when the two lived in Springfield, Ill., as bachelors far surpassed what was common or necessary. Tripp also cites accounts from Washington wags of that period who noted that the 16th President regularly shared a bed with David Derickson, one of his guards, whenever his wife Mary Todd was out of town. Tripp throws in a handful of other bunkmates, Lincoln's bawdy sense of humor and his stormy relationship with...
...assembling his data, Tripp is more persuasive in highlighting the rigidity of modern attitudes toward male friendships than in proving anything about Lincoln's sexuality. Suggestions that Lincoln was gay have existed for years. In his 1926 biography, the poet Carl Sandburg wrote that the President and Speed possessed "a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets"--a lyrical though curious phrase that seems to suggest something unmasculine...
There was a time when lots of people wished LINDA TRIPP would leave the country. Now that she's got a new do and a new beau, Monica Lewinsky's indiscreet confessor plans to take a posse with her. Tripp and her German fiance, who run a boutique together in Virginia, are leading tours of Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. "It's a great opportunity for all my detractors to come along," jokes Tripp. Sounds fun. Just watch what you gossip about on the tour...