Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Elizabeth gave her sisters a sympathetic ear and a place of refuge for as long as she could, but in due course her darling Ninian earned his degree and moved them to his hometown of Belleville, Illinois, across the river from St. Louis, where he worked as a lawyer and dabbled in local politics. Elizabeth had scarcely settled in when Ninian’s father unexpectedly passed away, a victim of a deadly cholera epidemic that swept through the frontier states in that terrible summer of 1833. Although the Todd family was spared, in large part because Papa evacuated Ma and the children to the resort town of Crabb Orchard Springs when the first rumors of disease began to circulate, Lexington suffered a dreadful blow. In the span of ten days in June, fifteen hundred citizens fell ill and nearly fifty a day perished. In a heartrending, terrifying letter, a friend of Elizabeth’s who had lost her parents and two brothers described the prohibition of public gatherings, the scarcity of coffins that was forcing mourners to bury their loved ones in old trunks and boxes brought down from attics, and the silent streets deserted except for horses slowly pulling carts stacked with the dead.

  In Springfield, the disease had not been nearly as apocalyptic, but the Edwards family had lost its patriarch, and although Elizabeth had not known her father-in-law long, she mourned him sincerely. Governor Edwards had been a generous father, and as his eldest child, Ninian received a substantial inheritance. When his father’s successor appointed him attorney general in 1834, Ninian purchased a magnificent home on Aristocracy Hill in Springfield. Splendid and spacious, the house had well-appointed parlors and dining rooms for entertaining, as well as numerous spare bedrooms for guests. The residence quickly became a hub of society’s younger set, and as Ninian achieved one political advancement after another and Elizabeth forged many close friendships, invitations to dinners, balls, teas, and soirees at the Edwards residence became highly sought after among the Springfield elite.

  There were, of course, sorrows to temper their joys. They were three years married when Elizabeth gave birth to their first child, a precious babe who died in her arms a few days later. Elizabeth wept and grieved, longing for her child, for her absent sisters, but she was comforted by the kindness of friends and by Ninian’s steadfast love and assurances that they would try again.

  By spring, Elizabeth had recovered from her physical ordeal, although a heaviness lingered in her heart, sometimes present only at the edge of her awareness but always with her. In the forge of loss, she had become more empathetic to others’ unhappiness, and when she contemplated her younger sisters’ difficulties at home, she resolved to help.

  “I’d like to invite Frances for an extended visit,” she told Ninian one morning over breakfast. “Ma has nine children at home with another expected in November, and next month Mary completes her studies at Madame Mentelle’s and will move back home for good. The overcrowding will be unbearable, and the burden of keeping the peace will fall upon Frances’s shoulders.”

  Ninian smiled and reached for her hand across the table. “And who better than a doting older sister to offer her refuge?”

  “I’m not thinking only of her,” Elizabeth admitted, clasping his hand in hers. “I long for my sister’s company. It will do my heart good to see her enjoying herself for a change, to be merry and smiling among young ladies and gentlemen her own age, instead of constantly surrounded by the clamor of small children.”

  What she did not say was that Frances was nearly twenty, and if she was going to find a husband among the young gentlemen of her acquaintance in Lexington, she likely would have done so already. She could not bear to imagine Frances as a lonely spinster living in her stepmother’s shadow for the rest of her days.

  “How long would you like Frances to stay?” asked Ninian.

  “As long as she likes,” replied Elizabeth. “Indefinitely. Until she has another home to go to and need not return to Papa and Ma, where they have no room for elder siblings.”

  Ninian’s eyebrows rose, and she knew he understood that the object was to find Frances a good husband. It was well that he did not object, for Elizabeth expected him to steer his most eligible bachelor friends in Frances’s direction.

  Frances eagerly accepted her sister’s invitation, and as it turned out, by the time she came to them in October of 1836, Elizabeth had happy news to share: she was expecting again. “How glad I am that you will be here to help me through my ordeal,” Elizabeth told her after divulging the wonderful secret.

  Frances glowed with the happy pride of knowing she was needed and wanted. “No gladder than I am to be here. I promise to help you however I can.”

  “I didn’t invite you here only to wait on me,” said Elizabeth, nudging her playfully. “I’ve arranged a very full social calendar for you, and I insist that you thoroughly enjoy yourself.”

  Frances laughed and promised she would try.

  True to her word, Frances reveled in parties, dances, and dinners throughout the autumn and into the winter, striking up friendships with young ladies in the Coterie, as the members of their clique called themselves, and making the acquaintance of many charming young men. But the sisters also enjoyed quieter, companionable hours sitting together in the parlor or conservatory, reading, sewing, or knitting, reminiscing about bygone days and gossiping about new acquaintances. Their conversations often turned to politics. They were Todds, after all, and since childhood they had been offered a healthy portion of political talk with nearly every meal at their father’s table.

  Ninian, a Whig like Papa and Mr. Clay, was serving in the state legislature, and the summer leading up to the August elections had been especially contentious. In June, Colonel Robert Allen, a Democrat of Springfield running for the legislature, had announced in a campaign speech that he possessed certain shocking facts that, if known to the public, would destroy Ninian’s chance for reelection, as well as the chances of two other Whigs, the sisters’ cousin John Todd Stuart and John’s junior law partner, Abraham Lincoln. According to Ninian, Mr. Lincoln had written an eloquent letter to Colonel Allen urging him to divulge the alleged facts, “whether they be real or imagined,” so they could be examined and their veracity determined. In July, another Democrat, Dr. Jacob Early, brought up the mysterious facts in a debate; when Ninian shouted him down and declared his charges absolutely false, Dr. Early challenged him to a duel. Thankfully, Mr. Lincoln spoke next, and he handled the subject in dispute with such eloquence and clarity that his listeners were astonished, and all thoughts of a duel were abandoned. Ultimately, Colonel Allen’s specious allegations had done lasting damage: both Ninian and Mr. Lincoln had easily won reelection in August, but cousin John, who had forgone the state legislature in a bid for Congress, lost his seat.

  “You and Ninian are always speaking of this Mr. Lincoln,” remarked Frances one evening as she and Elizabeth were relaxing by the fireside before bed. “You all seem very impressed with him. Why have you never had him up the hill for dinner?”

  Elizabeth hesitated before explaining, for when she tried to frame it in words, the omission seemed terribly snobbish and unkind. After all, Mr. Lincoln was their cousin’s law partner, and like Ninian he was one of the famed “Long Nine,” a group of nine senators and representatives, each over six feet tall and sharing similar political philosophies, who represented Sangamon County in the Illinois General Assembly. Their most ambitious endeavor was their effort to move the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield, a measure that naturally was very popular with their constituents. By those measures, he seemed a natural fit for the Edwardses’ dinner table.

  But while Mr. Lincoln was a brilliant lawyer, a skilled politician, a gifted orator, and a man of sterling character, he was also uncultured and roughly hewn, a self-educated backwoodsman and veteran of the Black Hawk War who had risen above his humble origins by sheer force of will and native intellect. Although no one doubted the quality of his mind, his intelligence, or his amiability, he had no family connections to recommend him, his attire and grooming were astonishingly careless
, and he displayed none of the habits or the demeanor expected of a gentleman. He seemed uncomfortable and awkward in society, unfamiliar with the customs and norms that Ninian and the other men of their class had learned as boys. For a man of renowned eloquence in the courtroom and on the political stump, Mr. Lincoln struggled to engage in pleasant small talk with the ladies, with whom he seemed embarrassed and tongue-tied. He also had a gloomy aspect that his jokes and tall tales could only momentarily dispel, a perpetual melancholy that some attributed to the tragic loss of his beloved fiancée, Miss Ann Rutledge of New Salem, Illinois, who had succumbed to typhoid less than a year before. And yet, despite his ostensible shortcomings, Ninian and his acquaintances never spoke of Mr. Lincoln with anything but admiration and respect. Everyone believed he could go quite far, and since he had already exceeded all reasonable expectations, no one could predict how high he might climb.

  “He seems a worthy gentleman, despite his rude origins,” said Frances, her tone mildly scolding, after Elizabeth tried to explain. Abashed, Elizabeth promised to invite Mr. Lincoln to join them at their next dinner party.

  He accepted with a note that was gracious, eloquent, and self-deprecating all at once, confirming Elizabeth’s misgivings that an invitation had been long overdue. On the night of the dinner, he amused the men with humorous stories and jokes, endeared himself to most of the ladies with his bashfulness and unmistakable kindness, and charmed Elizabeth herself without apparently trying to do so. He evidently made a fair impression upon Frances as well, for she agreed to let him call on her, twice coming for tea in the parlor. She accepted his invitation to escort her to an academic lecture in town, and he kept company with her at a levee at their cousin John’s home. But the spark, if such it was, never quite caught fire, and by spring it was evident that Frances had lost interest.

  “He’s a good man, an excellent man, but—” Frances paused to search for the words. “I’m abashed to say it, but he is deficient in the little niceties of romance that warm a woman’s heart. Is it shallow of me that I mind this? He pays no attention to his appearance, he has made no effort to improve his shabby clothes or his unkempt hair, and the art of flirtation is utterly lost on him. And—well, he isn’t what one would call classically handsome, is he?”

  “No, he is not, at that,” admitted Elizabeth, without noting that other qualities—his integrity, intelligence, and kindness—were far more important in a marriage than fine clothes and debonair manners. She kept this observation to herself, because in truth she was relieved that Frances had not formed an attachment to him. Despite his many fine qualities and great potential, he was quite poor, and he simply did not come from the same exalted sphere that the Todds, Parkers, and Edwardses inhabited. She could not imagine that Frances, brought up in the same genteel fashion as all the Todd sisters, would be content as the wife of a penniless country lawyer.

  Thus, Mr. Lincoln returned to what he had formerly been to the family: Ninian’s Whig colleague in the legislature and cousin John’s law partner, but a potential suitor to a Todd sister no longer.

  In April, Elizabeth gave birth to a beautiful daughter whom she and Ninian named Julia. Soon thereafter, Mary came to visit for the summer and helped with the baby, while also enjoying the whirl of social gaiety, as Frances had done before her, and reveling in the political discussions that filled every dinner and levee at the Edwards residence with crackling energy and great expectations for the future. The mix of intelligent, ambitious men and beautiful, clever women created an intoxicating atmosphere in which even Elizabeth, a respectable wife and mother, thrilled to partake.

  At the end of the summer, Mary returned rather reluctantly to Lexington to live at home and pursue an advanced course of study with her former teacher, Dr. Ward. Having heard so many stories about the remarkable and peculiar Mr. Lincoln, she regretted that she had not had the opportunity to meet him during her visit. They might have crossed paths at any number of society gatherings, but Mr. Lincoln had been too busy with his burgeoning law practice and with serving in the Tenth Assembly to be out and about.

  “I’ll introduce you the next time you visit,” Elizabeth promised. “I hope you are not disappointed if he does not live up to his billing.”

  “May the day of that visit come soon,” Mary replied fervently, with a forlorn little smile.

  Elizabeth understood that it was Springfield Mary would miss, not the introduction to Mr. Lincoln that she regretted deferring. Embracing her, Elizabeth murmured soothing reassurances, pained to see her vivacious younger sister’s light dimming at the prospect of returning to their stepmother’s household. Madame Mentelle’s school had always felt more like home to her than Ma’s house on Main Street, but her years there had come to an end.

  Elizabeth resolved to invite Mary back for a lengthier visit as soon as Frances was properly settled.

  Months passed before Elizabeth glimpsed any sign that such a day was on the horizon. Frances enjoyed flirtations with several young men in the Coterie, but it was some time before her heart warmed to any one gentleman in particular. Dr. William S. Wallace, a native of Pennsylvania who had studied at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, had come west intending to embark on a new career in land speculation, but after he settled in Springfield, the need for doctors had been so great that the citizens had prevailed upon him to return to the practice of medicine. He had done so willingly and had opened a drugstore as well. The Golden Mortar was located on the first floor of an office building just below the law practice of cousin John Todd Stuart and Mr. Lincoln. The two lawyers frequented the shop often, especially Mr. Lincoln, who enjoyed passing idle hours entertaining the men who gathered around its potbellied stove with jokes and stories. It was through their friendship that Frances became acquainted with Dr. Wallace, and what a momentous introduction it proved to be.

  Neither Elizabeth nor Ninian saw their romance coming. Dr. Wallace was intelligent and amiable, but he was fourteen years older than Frances, with no political ambitions and only modest skills as a businessman. Yet he was admired as a physician and respected as a gentleman of the community, and he must have been proficient in “the little niceties of romance that warm a woman’s heart,” for he certainly warmed Frances’s.

  On a lovely spring day in May 1839, Frances married William in the flower-bedecked parlor of the Edwards residence, surrounded by her friends from the Coterie and his from the Springfield business community. If Frances had any misgivings about leaving her comfortable suite in her sister’s home on Aristocracy Hill for a modest room at the Globe Tavern, a humble, two-story, wooden inn near the statehouse, she was too much in love to dwell upon them. Besides, Elizabeth assured herself, their new lodgings were only temporary. Eventually William would save up enough money to move his bride into more suitable accommodations. Such a move would be necessary, in fact, once children came along.

  Soon after the wedding, Elizabeth wrote to Mary to tell her about the ceremony; about Frances’s lovely white satin gown; about the warm, loving looks the couple shared as they spoke their vows; about the excellent wedding supper, for Elizabeth’s cook had absolutely outdone herself for the occasion; about the merriment of the assembled guests; and about the certain hopes the couple had of future happiness.

  And now, since Frances was settled and their best guest room was vacant, Elizabeth concluded her letter with an invitation. “Come and make our home your home,” she wrote, fulfilling a promise she had made two years before.

  Mary was already twenty-one, and although she had entertained many ardent suitors in Lexington, none of them had been intelligent, witty, or intriguing enough to hold her interest long. “Among her beaux are many scholarly, intelligent men,” cousin Betsey had written to Elizabeth not long before, her dismay and exasperation evident in every line. “Yet she never at any time shows the least partiality for any of them. Indeed, at times her expression indicates a decided lack of interest, and she endures their attention without enthusiasm. Without meaning
to wound, she often cannot restrain a witty, sarcastic phrase that cuts deeper than she intends. There is no malice in her heart, but she is impulsive and makes no attempt to conceal her feelings. Indeed, that would be impossible, for her face betrays every passing emotion.”

  Cousin Betsey despaired that Mary might never find a husband if she did not temper her wit and learn to say more with a demure glance than a sharp tongue. Elizabeth had to laugh to imagine her sister, skilled at school theatricals though she had been, attempting such a ruse. Mary simply had not yet met the man who could adore her as she was, who could match her wit for wit.

  Perhaps she would meet that man in Springfield.

  9

  August–September 1875

  Emilie

  Emilie was grateful that Robert and her sisters in Springfield kept her informed about Mary’s condition, since Mary would not or could not reply to her letters, but as the summer passed their piecemeal reports became increasingly frustrating to her. Assembling a complete picture of Mary’s circumstances from the details scattered among so many different letters became a nearly impossible task when one sister would unwittingly contradict something Robert had written, or when vague ellipses in their letters suggested they were not telling her all that they knew or suspected.

  Perhaps her sisters held back out of kindness, to spare her feelings. They must have guessed how it had wounded her to learn that Mary frequently begged the bedridden Elizabeth to visit—never directly, always using Robert or Mrs. Bradwell as intermediaries—while Emilie’s offers to come to Bellevue had been rebuffed by silence.