Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Elizabeth and Ninian resigned themselves to a betrothal when Mr. Lincoln returned to Springfield in early November, but to their relief, the couple did not hasten to make their intentions known. Rumors circulated that they were secretly engaged, but when they met at society functions, they made no overt displays of affection. By early December, Elizabeth began to wonder if their affections had cooled, so little did they resemble a couple passionately in love.

  “Do you think Mr. Lincoln fancies Matilda?” Frances murmured in Elizabeth’s ear at a Christmas party where Mary held court at one end of a ballroom and Mr. Lincoln regaled a cluster of young lawyers with tales from his circuit court travels on the other.

  “Everyone fancies Matilda,” replied Elizabeth, searching the crowd for her husband’s young cousin. “She is the most beautiful and charming young lady in Springfield. All the men are at least half in love with her, except your husband and mine.”

  “I believe she means more to Mr. Lincoln than that,” said Frances, cupping her chin in her hand as she pondered the scene before them—ladies in beautiful gowns of velvet and silk flirting with gallant gentlemen, ingenues and youths mingling with matrons and statesmen, music from a string quartet serenading them all. “Or perhaps he simply dislikes that Mary has gotten so fat.”

  “Frances!”

  “I’m not trying to be cruel, but look at her. She’s become corpulent. She’s straining the seams of her gown.”

  “That’s a dreadful thing to say.” Yet Elizabeth could not deny it. “I might expect as much from Ann, but not from you.”

  “Others have said far worse, though apparently not in your hearing.” Frances put her head to one side, considering. “However, I suppose Mr. Lincoln is too decent a man to break off an engagement because of her looks, if they are engaged and it is not merely wishful thinking on Mary’s part.”

  “Enough,” said Elizabeth sharply in an undertone. Bickering between sisters tried her patience. They were no longer children competing for attention from Papa and approval from Ma.

  But something had altered between Mary and Mr. Lincoln; that much was evident. Mary was still lovely, if a bit plump, and if Mr. Lincoln gazed admiringly at Matilda, so did nearly every other man in the city. Elizabeth longed for her sister to confide in her as she once had, but Mary had been deeply offended by the confrontation in the parlor the previous March, and she refused to reveal anything about her feelings or their understanding, or to divulge when, or if, a betrothal would be forthcoming.

  Then, on the first day of the New Year, Mr. Lincoln called unexpectedly at the Edwards residence, his voice low with regret, his expression somber. Mary received him in the parlor, while Elizabeth, Matilda, and Ninian withdrew to give them privacy. They knew not what to expect, but the sound of raised voices through the closed door made them wary, and the high-pitched sobs that followed were more foreboding still. After a lengthy interval of quiet, the sound of footsteps in the hall and the closing of the front door indicated that Mr. Lincoln had departed without bidding them good-bye. They hurried back to Mary, who sat crumpled on the settee, tears streaming down her face. In a voice choked by grief, she told them that their engagement had ended.

  “He asked me to release him,” she said as Elizabeth swiftly sat beside her and took her in her arms. “I told him that I would do so, but I declared that my heart is unaltered, unlike his, and he is duty-bound to marry me.”

  “Oh, sister,” said Elizabeth, exchanging an anguished look with Ninian. “It would be better just to let him go.”

  “I’ve no doubt you would think so,” said Mary, pulling free from her sister’s embrace. “I’m sure your disapproval of the match was at least in part what compelled him to end it.”

  Pained, Elizabeth put her arms around Mary again, gently, and this time her sister allowed it. “All will be well in time,” she said, holding her close, swaying slightly from side to side as if she were comforting her own young daughter. “All will be well.”

  In the months that followed, Mary gradually recovered from her broken heart. She returned to society almost immediately, to dispel gossip, and was thankful that they had never publicly announced their betrothal so she need not explain what had happened to it. At first her laughter and gaiety had a forced, hollow quality, but soon she seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself, if not with the same lightheartedness as before.

  Mr. Lincoln, quite to the contrary, looked dreadful and undone, like a man on the brink of losing his reason. Ninian confided to Elizabeth that his friends worried he was suffering a nervous breakdown from which he might not recover. Rumors swirled that he met with his physician daily and described himself as the most miserable man living. He missed a legislative roll call, and when he finally emerged after a week’s self-imposed confinement to his rooms, witnesses observing him on the street said that he looked haggard and emaciated. He never came by the Edwards residence anymore, of course, but mutual friends kept Ninian informed. By spring, Mr. Lincoln was apparently recovering from his profound distress. Later that summer, a five-week stay at Mr. Speed’s country estate in Kentucky was said to have done him a world of good.

  A year passed. Life went on for Mary and Mr. Lincoln, separately.

  Frances and William had long since moved from the small room at the Globe Tavern to a charming home on Sixth Street, and it was there that Frances gave birth to a precious daughter they named Mary Jane. Soon thereafter, the Wallaces invited eighteen-year-old Ann to live with them, ostensibly to help with the baby, but also to seek a husband. Though Mary was yet unmarried, and it was generally desirable for elder daughters to marry before younger, Papa and Ma thought it unfair to make Ann wait. Also, Ma had birthed two more children since Mary had gone to Springfield, and the house on Main Street was too crowded yet again.

  To Elizabeth, Mary seemed ever mindful that her twenty-fourth birthday was swiftly approaching, and that with each passing year she would become less likely to marry. Her mood was either in the garret or the cellar, blissfully happy or profoundly depressed. As for Mr. Lincoln, according to the rumor mill, he struggled even to climb out of the cellar. It was impossible not to hear news of him from time to time, not only because they had many mutual friends, but also because cousin Stephen Logan had taken him on as a junior law partner earlier that spring.

  For months, Mary mingled in society while Mr. Lincoln avoided it, focusing on his law practice, his legislative responsibilities, and the company of sympathetic friends. Mary was occasionally heard to say that she wished Mr. Lincoln would rejoin society, for his intelligent conversation and tall tales were greatly missed, and his acquaintances wanted reassurance that he was well. Elizabeth was proud of Mary for maintaining a tone of sincere friendship when she spoke thus, betraying none of the sadness or regret that surely lingered in her heart.

  Then, in September 1842, Mary and Mr. Lincoln met by chance at the wedding of mutual friends. Elizabeth observed them from a discreet distance as they chatted amiably, shared a dance, and parted with cordial smiles. A wave of relief swept through the gathered throng; Miss Todd and Mr. Lincoln had reconciled, and no longer would mutual friends be obliged to keep them apart or side with one or the other.

  After that, Mary never spoke of Mr. Lincoln at home among the family except with casual indifference. Thus, it came as a complete shock one afternoon in early November when Ninian rushed home from work, burst in upon Elizabeth in the parlor, and declared, “Mary and Lincoln are getting married!”

  “What?” exclaimed Elizabeth, rising. “They are betrothed?”

  “Yes, and not only that, they are marrying today. I ran into Lincoln on the street just as he was leaving the home of Reverend Dresser, and he informed me that they had arranged for him to perform the ceremony at his residence this evening.”

  “Marrying—today? It cannot be!”

  “Naturally I insisted that the vows would be exchanged here, at our home, instead.” Ninian ran a hand over his beard, grimacing. “How would it look other
wise?”

  Elizabeth nodded, her thoughts in a whirl. How could she possibly pull together a proper wedding with only a few hours’ notice? “We must prevail upon them to postpone, if only for a day.”

  Ninian agreed, so Elizabeth gathered up her skirts and raced upstairs to her sister’s bedroom, where she discovered Mary singing happily to herself as she packed her trunk. “You are engaged?” Elizabeth managed to say. “Without a word to me, to Ma, to anyone?”

  Mary offered a coy smile and a little shrug. “After all that happened, we believed it was best to keep the news of our renewed courtship from all eyes and ears.”

  “What courtship? When did you ever see each other?”

  “We met at the home of Mrs. Francis. It was she who brought us together at the wedding of Martinette and Alexander, and she who offered us her parlor and companionship so that we might talk and rekindle our affection.” She smiled, her gaze turned inward. “Only we two knew that the embers had continued to burn all these long months.”

  Elizabeth shook her head and clasped a hand to her brow, exasperated. She pleaded with Mary to delay the wedding one day, and although at first Mary regarded her suspiciously, she eventually consented. Then Elizabeth sprang into action, swiftly sending out three dozen invitations, engaging three bridesmaids and a best man, selecting a simple white muslin dress from Mary’s wardrobe for a bridal gown, and putting the parlor in proper order.

  “There is hardly time to arrange a wedding supper,” said Elizabeth peevishly as she and her sister passed on the stairs, rushing about on separate errands. “Instead of baking a cake, I may have to send out for gingerbread.”

  “Gingerbread is good enough for plebeians,” Mary snapped back, referring to the Edwardses’ previous objections to Mr. Lincoln’s humble origins.

  Elizabeth bit back a retort, and she did attempt to bake a proper wedding cake, but in her haste and distraction she made some error and it turned out badly, sinking in the middle and drying out around the edges. There was nothing to be done for it.

  Rain fell in torrents on the wedding day, pounding against the parlor windows as the couple exchanged vows from the Book of Common Prayer before their hastily assembled friends and family. Abraham—for that was what Elizabeth must call him now—slipped a gold ring on Mary’s finger inscribed with the phrase, “A.L. to Mary, Nov. 4, 1842. Love is Eternal.”

  Mary was radiant, Abe smiling and yet solemn. It was an unexpected end to a tumultuous courtship, but they loved each other, the deed was done, and her sister was immeasurably joyful at long last, so Elizabeth pushed her lingering worries to the back of her mind and wished the couple every happiness.

  11

  September 1875

  Frances

  Frances hoped Elizabeth knew what she was doing.

  Robert believed that the Bradwells had ruined Bellevue as a place of healing for his mother, and although Dr. Patterson had asserted in his letter to the Chicago Tribune that he believed her still to be insane, he was willing, even eager, for his patient to depart. Frances suspected that his agreement with Robert’s assessment was for his own comfort rather than Mary’s well-being, but she could not blame him for desiring a respite from the Bradwells, their persistent agitating, and the onslaught of publicity they had brought down upon him.

  Even though Dr. Patterson believed Mary ought to depart at once, Robert prudently sought a second opinion. At his request, Dr. Andrew McFarland, the superintendent of the Jacksonville, Illinois, State Hospital for the Insane, traveled to Bellevue to examine his mother. Dr. McFarland insisted that Mary required the serenity, quietude, and expert care of an asylum for at least a few more months if there was to be any reasonable hope of restoring her sanity. He perceived no good that could result from a visit to Springfield other than to gratify her ardent wish to go, the seed of which apparently had been planted in her mind by others. “My fear is that as soon as she is beyond the control of the present guardians of her safety, the desire for further adventure will take possession of her mind,” Dr. McFarland warned. “Desires which, if acted upon, may prove hazardous to the patient.”

  Robert had sent a copy of the doctor’s report to Elizabeth and Ninian, and they in turn had shared it with Frances and Ann. Given Dr. McFarland’s emphatic recommendations, Frances assumed that Robert would decide to leave Mary where she was until she was completely recovered, while also banishing the Bradwells so they could no longer influence her. To her astonishment, he instead arranged for his mother to travel to Springfield, and for Elizabeth to receive her. Still cautious, Dr. Patterson imposed two conditions before consenting to her release: Mary would remain under a nurse’s care while traveling and throughout her visit, and she must sever all communications with the Bradwells.

  Privately, Frances and Ann agreed that moving Mary from the asylum to the Edwards residence was reckless and potentially dangerous. “Must Mary always have everything she wants, even if it is harmful to her?” said Ann, exasperated. “If Dr. Patterson can no longer help her, then send her to another asylum, but don’t make her poor Elizabeth’s burden.”

  “Elizabeth has always believed that Mary would be better off in a private home,” Frances reminded her, “where she can be cared for by someone who loves her.”

  “Well, that leaves only Elizabeth, doesn’t it?” Ann retorted.

  Frances recoiled, stung. She too loved Mary, and she had to believe that deep down Ann did as well. Frances had not offered to take Mary into her home only because she believed her sister was better off at Bellevue. She was motivated by love as much as Elizabeth was; they simply disagreed about what was best for Mary.

  Sometimes Frances wondered if she was the only Todd sister who remembered how Mary had agonized over where to go after Abraham’s tragic death ten years before. His successor, President Andrew Johnson, had allowed the grieving widow to remain at the White House for more than a month after the Executive Mansion passed to him—an act of great courtesy, Frances had thought at the time, and still believed, even though subsequent events had sparked her keen dislike of the man. Estranged from her sisters, Mary had not summoned any of them to comfort her in her distress, so they learned secondhand that when obliged to leave Washington, she had adamantly refused to move back into the house she still owned on Eighth and Jackson in Springfield, where she and Abraham had embarked upon married life. The house was too full of memories of happier years with her husband, she had written to their cousin Betsey, and if she tried to live there, “deprived of his presence, and that of the darling boy we lost in Washington, it would not require a single day for me to lose my reason entirely.” A few years later, Mrs. Keckly had recorded in her memoir—which Frances and Ann had secretly read, against Mary’s wishes and Robert’s—that Mary had vowed never to return to Springfield until she was wrapped in a shroud to be laid to rest in the tomb beside her husband. “May heaven speed that day,” she had added fervently, words that had pained Frances to read. She too had lost her husband and had buried two children—her youngest, dear fifteen-year-old Charles, only a year before—yet she did not yearn for death. How could two sisters face similar heartbreak so differently, one with resigned determination to press on, the other with a melancholic longing for it all to be over?

  Mary’s claims about her circumstances, then and now, were full of contradictions. Frances knew for a fact that not all of Mary’s memories of Springfield could be happy—far from it—nor was the house on Eighth and Jackson the first that Mary and Abraham had shared as husband and wife. That abode, which Mary euphemistically called “cozy” and “quaint” in letters to distant friends who would never see it, was the same humble room at the Globe Tavern that Frances and William had rented as newlyweds. At four dollars a week for lodging and board, it was inexpensive and clean, but those were its only redeeming qualities, for it was neither private nor comfortable, nor quiet. Several stagecoach companies rented offices in the building, and whenever a stage arrived, a large bell on the roof would peal loudly
just above the startled tenants’ heads. Legislators and lawyers who had come to town for the season gathered in the public rooms downstairs, loud and gregarious from morning until late into the night. Lodgers were required to take their meals together in a common dining room at specific hours, regardless of individual schedules or preferences. Frances and William had tolerated the Globe with good humor and by assuring each other that it was only temporary, but Mary had loathed the place as much as Abraham had enjoyed it, accustomed as he was to hard travel and the communal board of the circuit court.

  Although they could not afford a fine home, Mary had resolved to appear in society as if a hilltop mansion like her eldest sister’s was the Lincolns’ natural habitat and destiny. Within days of their wedding, she had commenced polishing her rough diamond of a husband, sending him to the tailor to have new clothes made—better-fitting than any he had purchased before, made of finer fabrics—and endeavoring to rid him of his gauche country manners, such as eating butter with his knife, coming to the dinner table in his shirtsleeves, or putting on his hat “country fashion,” with his hand on the back of the brim. Abe had earnestly tried to go along with her plan to remake his “outward show,” but he had often reverted to his old habits, making the aristocratic Mary’s temper flare. Once, after she had spoiled an afternoon tea with her sisters at Elizabeth’s house with her interminable complaints, Ann had interjected sharply, “If I had a husband with a mind such as his, I would not care what he wore or which fork he chose.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Mary had said, contrite. “It is foolish, the way I complain about very small things.”