Hanging Mary
Page 37
Nora’s brother called Alexander Whelan a worthless drunkard, and I was inclined to agree until I did some further research on him. He patented three inventions; he took the pledge occasionally; and when Nora died, he had the good sense to put his youngest son’s small inheritance from her in the hands of a guardian. So he turned out to be quite likable in the final draft of my novel.
Louis Weichmann is a different story. While he was in an unenviable position at the trial, which cast a shadow over the rest of his life, it also brought out some of the most unattractive aspects of his personality. He never let anyone associated with the prosecution forget the role he had played in securing Mary’s conviction, and in one particularly off-putting letter written in 1896, he told the aging Judge Bingham that the judge might not have many years left to him and asked him to contribute a letter to Weichmann’s book about the “mead of praise” to which Weichmann was entitled for testifying!
Did you find it difficult to write John Wilkes Booth’s character?
Actually, he was one of the easiest characters to write. Most people found him charming and engaging, so it wasn’t hard to bring out those qualities in him. I think it is a pity he didn’t enlist in the Confederate army and die a valiant death on the battlefield—many people, and the nation, would have been a lot better off for it.
Is there something you wish you had been able to find out?
Although she’s a minor character, it really annoys me that I haven’t been able to find out what happened to Catherine Baxley, who shares the ladies’ imprisonment for a brief time. Her trail grows cold in 1867, when she and Robert E. Lee corresponded about a donation he had made to a charity in which she was involved. I check the various newspaper archive sites from time to time in hopes that one day I’ll run across a mention of her. It’s difficult for me to imagine that she simply vanished into quiet obscurity, because she wasn’t a quiet lady.
Would you like to have lived in 1860’s America?
As interesting as it would have been, no—I like antibiotics and our other modern conveniences. Especially air conditioning, having spent summers in Washington, DC! But I would like to wear the clothes from the period. For author appearances, I got together a period ensemble, complete with corset, drawers, and hoop skirt, and I felt downright shabby after changing back into my usual sweater and jeans. I wish I could find more occasions to wear my gown, but the neighbors might think it a bit odd to see me walking the dogs in it.
All of your previous novels were set in medieval or Tudor England. Was it difficult for you to make the transition to nineteenth-century America?
Once I stopped typing “1565” for “1865” it was fine! Actually, it did take a little adjustment going from the high nobility in England to the middle class in America. I had to remember not to have my characters address each other as “my lord” and “my lady,” and to have them do for themselves instead of having servants waiting on them. And my nineteenth-century characters were more buttoned up—in every sense of the word—than my characters from centuries before.
Would you write another novel set during this period?
Certainly! I have some ideas percolating. And doing archival research is addictive.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Having previously written about medieval and Tudor England, I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing Hanging Mary, set a mere five-hour drive away from my home. The American setting allowed me to enlist some homegrown assistance, first and foremost that of my husband, Don Coomes, who generously drove me to and from Washington, DC, altered his schedule to accommodate mine, and put up with our dogs while I sat in a padded library chair and delved through documents to my heart’s content. I thank him and my children, Thad and Bethany Coomes, for putting up with me.
I am grateful to Cliff Roberts on the Lincoln Discussion Symposium forum for supplying the information that allowed me to begin my research on Nora Fitzpatrick, which saved me countless hours of genealogical inquiry. I would also like to thank Laurie Verge, director of the Surratt House Museum, and Sandra Walia, its former research librarian, for their assistance. Author Betty Ownsbey generously shared some of her newspaper clippings with me.
Thomas Otto, who has written an excellent book on St. Elizabeths, was kind enough to give me much-needed pointers on research at the U.S. National Archives. I also received helpful assistance from staff at the District of Columbia Archives, Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, the Georgetown University Library, the Library of Congress, Rice University’s Papers of Jefferson Davis project, and the Virginia Historical Society.
My editors at Sourcebooks, editorial director Shana Drehs and editor Anna Michels, did a marvelous job of whipping my manuscript into shape. They and my agent, Nicholas Croce, bore a very long interval between books with great patience and understanding. I also have to thank production editor Heather Hall and copy editor Gail Foreman for their thoroughness.
Finally, for entering (and winning) my contest to name Nora’s cat, I congratulate Evelyn Dangerfield, Libby Hunt, Jayne Smith, Julia Strouse, and Cyndi Williamson. Nora’s cat no doubt could have told the government quite a bit about what went on at Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse in the spring of 1865. But, as the late P. D. James’s Inspector Dalgliesh observed in a similar context, would he have told the truth?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Susan Higginbotham has worked as an attorney and an editor. Hanging Mary, the first of her historical novels to be set in the United States, is her sixth novel. Her first novel, The Traitor’s Wife, won the gold medal for historical/military fiction in the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards. For more information about her novels and the history behind them, visit her website and blog at www.susanhigginbotham.com and her Facebook page.
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