Even if you visit The John Updike Childhood Home & Museum frequently, there are still surprises at the house on 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, Pa.—open most Saturdays from 12-2pm.

Now on display in the second-floor hallway, opposite “The Brown Chest” from Updike’s childhood, is a painting of James Buchanan that John Updike had purchased, thinking it would make a good dust-jacket cover for the only play he wrote, Buchanan Dying—a play that was meant to be read.

Updike’s love of all things Pennsylvania extended to the historical. Buchanan was the only U.S. President to come from Pennsylvania. Buchanan served before Lincoln and until recent years has been considered the worst U.S. President because he backed the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, went along with southerners who schemed to admit Kansas as a slave state, and allowed the Confederate insurrection to foment prior to the Civil War.

Though Updike’s publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, honored his position as their biggest author by publishing Buchanan Dying, the book did not sell. As Kirkus Reviews summarized, “John Updike has made a stalwart attempt to rescue James Buchanan from historical oblivion — and failed. His play about the last hours of the fifteenth President of the United States offers, alas, a hero who is not so much dying as dramatically dormant.” 

Meanwhile, Knopf did not share Updike’s excitement for the painting he purchased and decided to go with a simple portrait instead. Not much more is known about Updike’s Buchanan painting, which was donated in 2021 by Updike’s children: Elizabeth, David, Michael, and Miranda.