Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Hurt and bewildered, Emilie had mulled over the snub and eventually had concluded that Mary meant no offense. Elizabeth and Emilie simply filled very different roles in her life, and at the moment, in her fragile condition, she needed Elizabeth—the eldest, the caregiver, the sister whose embrace they all sought in times of fear or sorrow. To Mary, Emilie would always be the Little Sister, lost and needing protection, even though she was a woman of almost thirty-nine years with children of her own. Her elder siblings’ inability to see her as more than a helpless child vexed Emilie beyond measure, especially since she had more than proven herself by successfully raising her three children, using her musical training to support her family, and managing a household quite capably, all without a husband by her side.

  Perhaps their delusions persisted because Emilie was the second-youngest of all the Todd siblings and it was hard to think of her as anything but the baby. Perhaps it was because she had been widowed so early in her marriage and, at the time, her circumstances had been so desperate that she had indeed needed her mother and sisters to rescue her.

  Perhaps it was because they had never forgotten how, years before, she had almost been lost to the family forever, and their excessive vigilance now was their unwitting attempt to atone for their neglect then.

  Elizabeth was already married and William was courting Frances the day two-year-old Emilie went missing. One minute she was in Mammy Sally’s care, and the next she had vanished. When a search of the house and garden turned up no sign of her, Papa contacted the police. The alert was sounded, and nearly everyone in Lexington turned out to search. Levi, George, and Nelson joined the groups combing the nearby fields and creek banks, while Papa, Mary, Ann, and hundreds of others scoured the city, fanning out from the Todd residence to knock on doors, alert neighbors, and query other children they encountered along the way. They went down alleyways and peered into dark, filthy places a sweet little girl never would have entered of her own volition. All the while, Ma remained at home with the younger children and the servants, pacing, increasingly frantic, awaiting word, fearing the worst.

  By midafternoon Papa had made his way nearly a mile from the house, much farther than toddler Emilie could have wandered on her own. He was searching down a narrow alley when he glanced up and spotted her watching him through a window. Racing to the stoop, Papa pounded on the door until it opened and the occupant emerged—a man a few years older than himself, his eyes red-rimmed, his mouth twisted in grief. Pushing past him, Papa snatched up Emilie, confirmed that she was unharmed, and then turned upon the man furiously, demanding an explanation. Shaking, the man replied that he had found Emilie wandering the streets, and since he and his wife had no children, he had decided to bring her home to raise as their own. “The child is so uncommonly beautiful,” he said as tears flowed down his cheeks. “It overcame my sense of right.”

  Moved by pity, Papa had declined to press charges. Back at home, the family, shaken but relieved, rejoiced to have Emilie restored to them, and she was watched very carefully from that day forward.

  Years later, when Emilie was home during a break between terms at the conservatory, she had asked Frances about that day. “My own memories are quite vague,” she had admitted. “I remember playing with a doll while a woman sang to me, and I remember Papa shouting at the man, but I don’t recall being carried off or how I came to be wandering alone on the streets.”

  “We were never certain how you were lost,” Frances had replied. “I’ve always supposed that Mammy Sally had taken you out on some errand or to play at the park, and in one of her drunken spells, she misplaced you.”

  “Mammy Sally had drunken spells?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  Emilie had shaken her head, taken aback. Her beloved mammy, an irresponsible drunkard? The very thought of it had been utterly incongruous with every childhood memory.

  “She got drunk whenever she had the chance, which fortunately wasn’t often. Auntie Chaney kept Papa’s liquor under lock and key, and Mammy Sally rarely scraped together enough money to buy any herself.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would she have taken to drink?”

  Frances had fixed her with a level gaze. “You really can’t imagine why? Perhaps it was the only escape she had.”

  Immediately Emilie had recognized the point her abolitionist half-sister was trying to make, but she could not believe it. The Todd family was kind to their servants. They were a beloved, essential part of the family. How on earth could Mammy Sally be so unhappy that she would drown her sorrows in drink?

  She had decided that Frances must have been mistaken—after all, she had been in Springfield at the time—but Emilie had never found any other reasonable explanation for how she came to be on the streets alone. Thank God Papa had found her and thwarted her kidnapping, not that the sad, childless couple had meant her any harm. Her parents and elder siblings never forgot how close they had come to losing her, and their instinct to protect her had endured until the present day—which might explain why they withheld from her the more upsetting details of Mary’s confinement at Bellevue.

  If not for Robert, Emilie might have felt completely in the dark. Throughout the summer, he had written her long letters freely confiding his increasing concern about the Bradwells. His mother had been content at Bellevue until they began visiting her, he complained, and their clamoring for her release made her nervous and excitable, undoing all the progress she had made earlier that spring. Robert was furious when he discovered that on one visit the Bradwells had brought an acquaintance along: Mr. Franc Wilkie, the lead writer for the sensationalist Chicago Times newspaper, and a complete stranger to Mary, Robert, and Dr. Patterson. That the Bradwells had chosen a Saturday for their visit, when they knew Dr. Patterson would not be at the asylum, was especially outrageous. Afterward, Dr. Patterson had warned Mrs. Bradwell that she must thereafter obtain Robert’s permission to visit Mary, especially if anyone unknown to the family accompanied her. To make this point unmistakably clear, Robert had met with her in person and, after politely thanking her for her concern, had told her to visit less often, never to bring along people whom he did not know, and not to carry letters from his mother to anyone other than family.

  Regrettably, the meeting did nothing to deter Mary’s determined self-appointed advocate. When Robert and his family departed for a much-needed vacation in Rye Beach, New Hampshire, Mrs. Bradwell set her sights on Elizabeth. In the third week of August, she turned up on the Edwardses’ doorstep to argue the case for Mary’s release—which, as a skilled, highly motivated lawyer, she did with aplomb. That very afternoon, Elizabeth wrote to Robert claiming that she had not expressed herself well in her previous letters, and that in truth she did not object to Mary leaving the asylum. “It may be that a refusal to yield to her wishes in this crisis will greatly increase her disorder,” she pointed out. “I now say, that if you will bring her down to Springfield, and are feeling perfectly willing to make the experiment, I promise to do all in my power for her comfort and recovery.”

  That same day Robert received an unsettling letter from Dr. Patterson, written after the Bradwells’ most recent visit to Bellevue. They had met with Mary privately for an hour and then, upon leaving, had stopped by the doctor’s office to declare that she ought to be released to her sister in Springfield immediately, for confinement was injuring her health. When Dr. Patterson showed them a letter Elizabeth had written to Robert explaining that she could not take Mary into her home owing to her recent surgery, the Bradwells insisted that “improper influences had been brought to bear upon Mrs. E.,” or she never would have refused to take Mary in.

  “So much discussion with Mrs. Lincoln about going away tends to unsettle her mind and make her more discontented, and should be stopped,” Dr. Patterson had concluded. “She should be let alone and this I have told Judge Bradwell. She should never have been subjected to this unnecessary excitement. It is now apparent that the frequent visits of Mrs. B. have sti
rred up discontent & thus have done harm.”

  Robert could endure no more. First, he telegraphed Dr. Patterson, instructing him to keep his mother in treatment at Bellevue and to cut off “absolutely all communication with improper persons.” Next, Robert wrote to Elizabeth to inform her of the doctor’s opinion that the Bradwells’ interference was harming Mary and to urge her not to entertain them or their notions any longer. Lastly, he wrote to Emilie to tell her about his communications with the others and to fume about the whole exhausting, unnecessary affair.

  “Surely this will be the end of it,” Emilie had written back. “At the very least, you have won a respite. The restrictions you have imposed will give your mother time to recover from the setbacks the Bradwells have caused. Upon your return to Chicago in September, they may again demand to see her and prevail upon you to secure her release, but until then, they can cause you, and her, no more trouble.”

  Her letter was probably still on its way to Robert when she learned how very wrong she was.

  One warm late August morning between breakfast and the arrival of her first pupil of the day, Emilie was practicing a particularly challenging section of the friska of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 when she sensed rather than heard someone just beyond her peripheral vision. Everyone knew not to interrupt her at the piano unless it was very important, so after finishing a measure, Emilie lifted her hands from the keys and turned on the bench to discover her daughter Katherine lingering in the doorway, holding a newspaper, her expression uncertain.

  For a moment Emilie’s breath caught in her throat. Sometimes Katherine so strikingly resembled her dear Ma, who had passed away little more than a year ago at the age of seventy-four, that Emilie was overcome by sudden emotion, a cascade of love and wistfulness. “What is it, darling?” she asked, beckoning her daughter forward.

  “You must not have read the papers this morning or you would know.” Katherine folded the paper in half as she approached and indicated a column just beneath the masthead. “If this is true, then it’s wonderful news, but why didn’t cousin Robert telegraph to tell us?”

  Emilie hesitated before accepting the paper, then braced herself and began to read.

  Mrs. Lincoln Recovering Her Reason.

  Mrs. M. L. Rayne writes to the Chicago Post and Mail from St. Charles, in the vicinity of Bellevue Hospital, to which Mrs. Lincoln was sent from Chicago, as follows:

  You will be glad to learn—and this is the first public intimation of it—that Mrs. Lincoln is pronounced well enough to leave the Asylum and visit her sister Mrs. Edwards, of Springfield. It is not likely she will return to Bellevue Place, as there is some feeling evinced in the matter of her incarceration, by friends who refuse to believe her insane. A leading lady lawyer, of Chicago, has been with her much of late, and, with the assistance of her legal husband, will assist Mrs. Lincoln’s restoration to the world. She is decidedly better, sleeps and eats well, and shows no tendency to any mania, but whether the cure is permanent or not, the test of active life and time will prove.

  “‘A leading lady lawyer,’” Emilie read aloud. “Who else but that dreadful Mrs. Bradwell? Robert has prevented her from appealing for his mother’s release privately, so the Bradwells will force a hearing in the press.” She set the paper on the far end of the bench, resisting the temptation to fling it aside. “Katherine, dear, I’m afraid your aunt Mary is still very much unwell. The Bradwells are simply trying to force your cousin Robert and Dr. Patterson to release her with this very premature announcement. When your aunt Mary does not appear in Springfield soon, the Bradwells expect the public to demand why her release was suddenly canceled.”

  “What is wrong with these meddlesome people?” asked Katherine. “Don’t they realize the harm that could come to Aunt Mary if she leaves the asylum before she’s cured?”

  “Perhaps they sincerely believe that she is not and never was insane.” Emilie sighed and rubbed her forehead where a slow, dull ache was forming. She could only hope that the Bradwells did not have a more sinister motive.

  By now Robert surely knew of the Bradwells’ leak to the press; newspapers in the East had undoubtedly reprinted the Post and Mail piece, just as the Kentucky papers had. Emilie could image her nephew striding along a forest path in New Hampshire, quietly furious, considering how to respond, or whether it would be best to maintain a dignified silence. Her heart went out to him. The burden of his mother’s illness was enough to bear without the Bradwells and Mrs. Rayne casting aspersions and attempting to force his hand.

  Two days later, Katherine was waiting for her at the breakfast table, her expression anxious as she slid a newspaper closer to Emilie’s plate.

  “What is it now, my love?” asked Emilie wearily. She beckoned the maid to pour the coffee. Bad news was best taken on an empty stomach, but she could not face whatever awaited her without coffee.

  “A second salvo,” said Katherine, indicating a column in the center of the page above the fold.

  Emilie took her time stirring cream and sugar into her coffee, raising the cup to her lips, and taking a deep drink. Then she could delay no longer.

  MRS. LINCOLN

  Judge Bradwell Tells a Post and Mail Reporter What He Thinks of Her Confinement

  Chicago, August 23.—Judge Bradwell to-day said to a Post and Mail reporter: I have no hesitation whatever in saying that Mrs. Lincoln ought not to be where she is now, and never ought to have been placed there. It was a gross outrage to imprison her there behind grates and bars, in a place understood to be for mad people. Why, to be so shut up and guarded, and locked up at night, with the feeling that it may last for life, is enough to make almost any aged and delicate woman crazy. She is no more insane today than you and I are. I am as thoroughly convinced of it as of my own existence. I have had several business letters from her since she has been there, and Mrs. Bradwell has had letters of womanly friendship from her repeatedly, and she writes as straight and intelligible a business letter as she ever did and as good friendly letters as one need ask for. There is not the slightest trace of insanity or of a weak mind about any of her writings. When I last visited her, one week ago to-day, she sighed and pleaded for liberty like a woman shut up without cause. Said she to me: “Mr. Bradwell, what have I done that I should be kept here in this prison, behind these grates, my footsteps followed, and every action watched by day, and my bedroom door locked upon the outside at night, and the key taken away by my jailer? Surely ‘I am not mad, but soon shall be.’ I want liberty to go among my friends.”

  Emilie was trembling from outrage by the time she reached the last line. What a brazen ploy, to declare before the public that Mary was the victim of unjust imprisonment! How dare they accuse Robert and Dr. Patterson—indeed, the entire panel of learned physicians who had appeared at the trial—of incompetence at best, malice and cruelty at worst?

  Yet amid her distress and indignation, Emilie also felt a prick of envy. Mary had evidently written a great many letters to the Bradwells. Emilie wished her sister had spared a moment to send one to her too, if only so that she might see for herself whether Judge Bradwell’s claims about the quality of Mary’s writing—and by extension, her mind—were true.

  Lest anyone doubt the Bradwells’ resolve, the very next day Franc Wilkie, the Chicago Times reporter who had accompanied the couple when they visited Mary earlier that month, published an exclusive interview beneath the cumbersome headline, “REASON RESTORED: Mrs. Lincoln Will Soon Return from Her Brief Visit to the Insane Asylum; for Her Physicians Pronounce Her Sane as Those Who Sent Her There; and She Is Only Awaiting Robert’s Return from the East to Set Her Free Again.” The rest of the column ostensibly offered an objective analysis of Mary’s health based upon scientific facts and the personal observations of a disinterested third party. The conclusion was that Mary, unjustly imprisoned, was no more insane than the men who had condemned her to the asylum.

  It was too much, and yet it was far from over.

  In the days
that followed, as Judge Bradwell’s interview and Mr. Wilkie’s falsely optimistic article were reprinted in papers across the country, other reporters pounced on the story, embellishing the original with biographical details about the persons involved, speculating about Mary’s condition, questioning Judge Bradwell’s role in the case, and defending Robert as an upstanding citizen and dutiful son who would not, under any circumstances whatsoever, have his mother committed without just cause. Several editorials indignantly questioned why the Bradwells had involved themselves so intimately in a private matter, especially since the family had clearly expressed their desire to be left alone. One newspaper referred to the Bradwells as “Intermeddling Mischief Makers,” a title that fit them as well as any Emilie could devise.

  Eventually Dr. Patterson felt compelled to set the record straight in a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, because, he said, “now that so many incorrect statements have been made, I deem it proper to correct some of them.” “Mrs. Lincoln is certainly much improved, both mentally and physically,” he noted, “but I have not at any time regarded her as a person of sound mind. I believe her to be now insane.” Even so, he did not object to her visiting her sister in Springfield, but he did not believe this would restore her reason. As for charges of false imprisonment, his accusers were free to pursue options other than castigating him in the press: “Mrs. Lincoln has been placed where she is under the forms of law, and, if any have grievance, the law is open to them.”

  Dr. Patterson’s letter was such a thorough and well-reasoned refutation that it should have brought the all too public dispute to an end, and the growing disgust with the Bradwells on the part of the press and the citizenry should have further induced them to withdraw. But Emilie had come to expect the worst from the Bradwells, so she did not allow her hopes to rise too high.