'It was a very droll time that we had at the White House...'

Born on this day in 1811 was Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the prohibitionist bestseller Uncle Tom's Cabin. She was born, I was interested to see, in Litchfield, Connecticut, a small town that wisely changed its name from Bantam township, adopting the name of the great Mercian cathedral city, but inserting, for reasons unknown, an extraneous 't'. Following the sensational success of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and in the second year of the Civil War, Mrs Stowe and family visited President Lincoln at the White House. Alas, it seems he did not greet her with the famous words, 'So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.' However, her daughter recalled, intriguingly, that 'It was a very droll time that we had at the White House, I assure you ... it was all very funny – and we were ready to explode with laughter all the while.' Mrs Stowe herself told her husband in a letter: 'I had a real funny interview with the President.' It seems Presidents were cut from a…