Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  And what an address it was. Elizabeth had heard her brother-in-law speak many times before, but this time she found herself profoundly moved by the simple eloquence of his words, the clarity and compassion of his thought.

  He began by attending to the fears of the Southern people, emphasizing that he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it existed, for although the Fugitive Slave Law deeply offended a great many Americans, he felt bound by the Constitution to enforce it. Then, using simple, articulate, and evocative phrases to lead the audience logically from one truth to another, he asserted that despite claims to the contrary, according to the Constitution, the Union was not and could not be broken. “I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States,” he vowed. “Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or, in some authoritative manner, direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.”

  The North and South could not physically separate, he reminded them, and must not spiritually. “We are not enemies, but friends,” he said, with lyrical power that enthralled his listeners. “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

  While all around her, and throughout the grounds of the Capitol, men raised their hats, women waved their handkerchiefs, and everyone roared their approval, Elizabeth sat motionless and transfixed, riveted by the unexpected power of Abe’s words. When Julia nudged her, she promptly rose, tears gathering in her eyes as the chief justice made his slow and unsteady way to the table where Abe stood. There the elderly jurist conducted the official rite, and Abe placed his hand on the Bible, recited the oath of office, bowed, and kissed the holy book.

  It was done. A fanfare of brass and a thundering of cannons announced that Abraham Lincoln had become the sixteenth president of the United States.

  17

  January 1876

  Frances

  “It is impossible to reason with your mother on the subject of her bonds,” Frances wrote to Robert early in the new year. “She is much exasperated against you.”

  If anything, that was an understatement. Although Mary was affable, cheerful, and friendly in every other regard with any other person, she fumed daily over her bonds and railed against the ungrateful, disloyal son who kept them from her. Whenever Frances protested that Robert was nothing of the sort, Mary would fix her with a baleful stare and say that she knew secrets about her son’s business affairs that would change Frances’s opinion of her nephew utterly if she knew. Frances did not ask her to divulge those secrets, for she knew they would be distortions of the truth, if not entirely fictitious. Robert was a scrupulous, highly principled young man, and it was obvious that Mary only wanted to punish him for having her committed.

  “Perhaps you could stop referring to your mother’s insanity in your letters and conversations with others, for such remarks invariably make their way back to her,” Frances suggested to Robert in the same letter. “She despises all references to her sanity, even when well-meaning friends express their joy that she has regained it. She has never considered herself insane, and hearing others, especially you, speak to the contrary aggrieves her.”

  Frances did not know how else to advise him. She and Robert agreed that Mary never should have left Bellevue until she was entirely cured, but now that she had been released, it was impossible to imagine that she would submit to being returned there—or being sent anywhere else she did not wish to go. Elizabeth and Ninian were unlikely to be much help if Robert decided to try. They believed that Mary’s reason was entirely restored, and except for the estrangement between her and her only surviving son, they seemed unperturbed by her behavior. They both repeatedly told Robert that his mother would surely remain upset and embittered toward him until he returned her bonds, but this observation was entirely unhelpful, since he was bound by law not to do so for at least five months more.

  Ann believed that Mary ought to be watched every moment and her choices restricted, while the Edwardses thought she ought to be able to do as she pleased and given whatever she wanted. Frances could not see how either controlling her or indulging her was likely to help her, and shouldn’t that be their objective, helping Mary? There had to be some middle way between those two extremes that would restore Mary’s reason and tranquility. She had made a great deal of progress at Bellevue before the Bradwells interfered. It was hard not to blame Mary’s renewed contact with the judge at least in part for her increasing irascibility.

  Frances could not hold the Bradwells responsible for Mary’s obsession with shopping, however, which she had harbored since long before she met the couple. Even in the early years of her marriage, shopping excursions had soothed and distracted Mary whenever she was worried or upset. When Abe had traveled on the county court circuit, Mary would ease her loneliness by setting out to her favorite Springfield shops to purchase fabrics, ribbons, trim for a new hat—little things that comforted her and did not damage their limited family budget. In Springfield, where everyone had known her, fear of embarrassment and Abe’s limited means had prevented her from running up debts, but such was not the case when she had accompanied him to Washington for his term in Congress. On one occasion, Abe had returned to their boardinghouse after receiving two unpaid bills from local merchants at his office. “I hesitated to pay them,” he had said, somewhat sternly, “because my recollection is that you told me there was nothing left unpaid.” At first Mary denied that the bills were hers—why she did so, when the falsehood was easily disproven, Frances could only guess—but eventually she had admitted the truth. Mary’s woebegone letters to her sisters afterward revealed just how much the incident had upset her, and they knew that this had been a shameful moment for Mary. Indeed, she had tried very hard to curtail her spending for as long as she remained in the city.

  Unfortunately, her resolve crumbled when she returned to Washington years later as the president’s wife. Early in Abe’s first term, when Mary discovered that Congress allotted $20,000 to each administration to refurbish the White House, she set about spending the allowance with unrestrained delight. Granted, as Frances knew firsthand, the White House had been sorely neglected and desperately needed improvement. Even on her first visit, when the excitement of Abe’s inauguration and her amazement over her sister’s rise had rendered her awestruck, Frances had observed the shabby state of the Executive Mansion—the threadbare rugs, broken furniture, torn wallpaper, and ruined draperies, from which souvenir collectors had snipped pieces until they hung in tatters.

  By the time Mary learned about the refurbishing funds, Frances and all of Mary’s traveling companions except cousin Lizzie Grimsley had returned home. The first lady could not even stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue without reporters setting telegraph lines abuzz with the news, so when Mary and Lizzie traveled to New York City on a shopping expedition in early May, journalists hounded their every step. Stories of them attending the theater, inspecting carriages at a manufacturer, dining, enjoying soirees, and visiting local luminaries filled newspaper columns and invited spiteful commentary. When Frances read of Mary’s expenditures on carpets, china, mantel ornaments, and other furnishings for the White House, she winced in sympathy, wishing it were possible for her sister to be more discreet. She also worried at the amount she seemed to be spending, not only because the papers depicted her as wasteful, but also because Frances could not imagine how the congressional allowance could cover it.

  And yet it had been impossib
le not to be swept up in her sister’s delight when she returned to Washington from New York and wrote home, delighted and full of anticipation, to describe her purchases and where she intended to arrange them. Before the year’s end, Mary had ordered custom wallpaper from Paris; a splendid carriage; a 190-piece porcelain dinnerware set adorned with the United States seal and embellished with royal purple and double gilt for the Executive Mansion, as well as a second set for herself, with her initials substituted for the nation’s seal; glassware and silverware; custom carpets, mantelpieces, draperies, chandeliers, and books; and rare exotic plants for the conservatory. She arranged for furnaces, gaslights, and running water to be installed, and she ordered everything scrubbed, polished, and repaired from attic to cellar. “I am determined to transform the White House into a showplace worthy of our great nation,” she told her sisters, and Frances had no doubt that she would.

  But although Frances had shared Mary’s excitement and longed to be invited for a return visit to tour the refurbished White House, she understood how insensitive it looked for the first lady to be spending so much on carpets and china when poor, brave Union soldiers went without tents and blankets. Regrettably, either Mary had not considered the plight of the soldiers or it had not concerned her enough to persuade her to rein in her shopping. By autumn, her renovations to the White House had not only run well over budget but earned her sharp criticism in the press. Frances learned much later that the White House gardener, John Watt, had taught Mary how to pad bills and hide expenses in his account. Ignoring the warnings of the commissioner of public buildings that she had no money left to spend, Mary continued running up debts until it became impossible to conceal them from Abe anymore. They had argued furiously on her forty-third birthday, and afterward Mary begged the commissioner to intercede with the president on her behalf. Reluctantly, he did so, and although Frances did not witness Mr. Lincoln’s explosive reply—“I swear I will never approve the bills for flub-dubs for this damned old house!”—everyone had heard of it soon thereafter.

  A more cautious woman would have learned her lesson, but not Mary. After the renovations were completed—and with such exquisite taste that even her harshest critics grudgingly admitted that the White House had been transformed into a beautiful, elegant, and glorious mansion, as befit a distinguished nation—Mary still indulged in extravagant shopping. Whenever she traveled to New York City, the newspapers filled up with snide reports about the first lady ransacking the treasures of Broadway stores, filling her carriage with shawls, boas, capes, handkerchiefs, parasols, fans, bonnets, boots, and gloves. Frances could only guess at how accurate the newspaper reports were, but when she read about an $80 handkerchief and a $2,000 shawl, she gasped aloud, pressed a hand to her heart, and prayed that the reporter was wildly exaggerating. Frances could not see how Mary could possibly afford all that she acquired, not when Frances’s own rough calculations indicated that her sister’s personal expenses over a mere few months had surpassed the entire budget for the White House refurbishments.

  A member of the White House staff had been charged with the thankless task of approving all of Mary’s official expenditures, but apparently no one had monitored her personal spending. Perhaps everyone had assumed that the limits of her husband’s salary would restrain her, but that had not been so since their newlywed years in Springfield. Whenever the first lady had ordered luxurious goods from a fine shop on Broadway or Pennsylvania Avenue, the shopkeepers had been all too delighted to extend her credit—but eventually the bills had come due, requiring payment in full.

  Mary had become very skilled at hiding her mounting debts from her husband; indeed, he had died without learning the truth. Frances had to wonder if Mary was using those well-honed skills now to conceal the extent of her spending from Robert, and from Elizabeth and Ninian. Ann insisted that Mary’s avid shopping had become a mania, and although Ann had always been Mary’s most severe critic, Frances found her observations difficult to dismiss. After all, Mary did spend hours every day ensconced with dressmakers or visiting Springfield’s finer boutiques, and surely some purchases resulted from so many consultations and outings. A woman as canny and determined as Mary would not find it difficult to smuggle new parcels into the Edwards residence and hide them among the trunks and cartons already stored in its various rooms and closets.

  Frances’s suspicions heightened after Elizabeth confided in her about a recent upsetting incident at home. In mid-January, the Edwardses had received a letter from Robert inquiring about an unpaid bill in his mother’s name that Springfield’s finest milliner had forwarded to him at his law practice. When Elizabeth and Ninian asked her about it, Mary unleashed a torrent of vitriol against her son that Elizabeth said fairly scorched their ears. Then Elizabeth’s expression grew pensive. “Mary said something else truly upsetting,” she said, lowering her voice, although they were alone in Frances’s parlor. Her sons Will and Ed were at work, Mary Jane was married and mistress of her own household, and Fanny was resting in her bedchamber, unwell.

  “What did she say?” prompted Frances.

  Elizabeth inhaled deeply, steeling herself. “She said that she had engaged two hired assassins to take Robert’s life.”

  “What?”

  “Of course, it must be nonsense,” Elizabeth hastened to add. “Mary would never do such a thing, not to her only living child—”

  “To anyone’s child, I should hope!”

  “And even if she were deranged enough to want to—and I don’t believe she is—well, how could she? How would Mrs. Abraham Lincoln find a professional assassin in Springfield, Illinois?”

  “I can’t imagine there are many assassins-for-hire between here and Chicago.” Frances clasped a hand to her forehead, disbelieving, but also deeply worried. “Goodness. She cannot be serious. She must have just been lashing out in anger, trying to get a reaction from you.”

  “I might think that, except that she has mentioned it on several occasions.”

  For a moment Frances could only stare at her, shocked. “This is madness,” she managed to say. “I do mean that literally. I know you want to believe that Mary’s reason has been restored, but threatening to kill Robert?”

  “I don’t think she would ever do it.”

  “The threat is madness enough.” Frances felt ill at the very thought of saying anything so hateful about any of her beloved children. “We don’t know what Mary might do, if she is truly mad. We should contact Dr. Patterson at once, and Robert, to warn him.”

  “It isn’t our place to write to Dr. Patterson,” said Elizabeth. “Yes, Mary lives with Ninian and me, but she is Robert’s responsibility. I’ll write to him, and he can inform Dr. Patterson if he sees fit.”

  “In the meantime,” said Frances firmly, “if Mary makes any more death threats against Robert, or anyone else, promise that you will tell me, even if you don’t believe she is serious.”

  Elizabeth agreed to do so, but made Frances promise not to contact Dr. Patterson on her own. Reluctantly, Frances accepted this condition, but she resolved to nag Elizabeth daily until she wrote to warn Robert, and also to spend more time with Mary so that the burden of observing her did not always fall upon Elizabeth’s shoulders. Did she not already do more than her share of sisterly caregiving by having taken Mary into her own home—and by making room for the piles of trunks their sister insisted upon keeping near at hand?

  Two days later, Frances called at the Edwards home with her daughters Fanny and Mary Jane, her sister’s namesake, to invite her on a sleigh ride so they could enjoy the fresh air and the lovely white blanket of new-fallen snow. It was a clear, sunny day and only a few degrees below freezing, so if they bundled up well and sat close together beneath a pile of snug quilts, their good spirits and merry company would keep them warm while they sped along their favorite picturesque loop from the city into the countryside and back.

  Delighted, Mary accepted their invitation and hurried off to change into a warmer dress and stock
ings before putting on her boots and wraps. Frances and her daughters chatted with Elizabeth in the foyer while they waited, and when Mary did not promptly return, Frances went to see if she needed any help. In all the bustle and strain to find spaces to store her many trunks, perhaps the warmer clothes she sought had been misplaced.

  Frances found Mary sitting on the edge of her bed, pulling a second pair of warm stockings over the first. She had already changed into her warmest wool dress, and the one she had taken off lay on the bed beside her. “We aren’t going to the North Pole,” Frances teased.

  “Laugh if you must, but you’ll wish you were wearing two pairs of stockings when we’re a mile out and your toes go numb.” Smiling, Mary rose and smoothed her skirts. “Do you think the girls’ hoods and scarves will be warm enough? They looked a bit worn. I have others they can wear.”

  “Their wraps are warm enough, but on the way over Mary Jane discovered a hole in her mitten. Do you have a pair she could borrow?”

  “I do indeed.” Mary promptly opened a bureau drawer and began searching.

  “You find those, and I’ll hang up your dress.” Frances lifted the discarded garment from the bed. “You’ll wrinkle the fabric if you leave it lying about like—”

  Abruptly she fell silent. The dress was strangely heavy. Bemused, she ran her hand down the bodice to the skirt until she found a pocket, which bulged open to reveal something solid and metallic—

  A pistol.

  Frances might have gasped, or perhaps it was her silence that made Mary look up from the drawer. “Be careful with that,” she said, a hint of annoyance in her voice. “It’s loaded.”

  After freezing for a moment in uncertainty, Frances carefully hung the dress in the wardrobe, heart pounding, taking care not to jostle the weapon. Then she turned to face her sister. “Mary,” she said with forced calm, “why are you carrying a loaded pistol around the house in your dress pocket?”