The Emancipator's Wife

by Barbara Hambly

  On days when migraine closed in on her, when Hetty didn't return from school till nearly suppertime and the kitchen fires went out, when Bobby's crying sawed at her pounding head, she would picture Lincoln as she knew he must be, arguing in some sweltering little courtroom about defaulting debtors or absconding seducers or divorcing farm-couples. Pictured him later repairing to the local tavern to sit telling yarns and talking politics with judge, opposing counsel, most of the jury, and upon occasion the defendant as well, before everyone went upstairs to sleep three to a bed and eight to a room, snoring and scratching like bears in wintertime.

  And she would hate him, and every man who lived that way and left their wives behind with their babies and their silent slow-moving second cousin from Indiana.

  It was not an easy year for any of them. At times during that miserable year of 1845 Mary would wonder, with tired amazement, how she who had been the belle of Lexington and the toast of half the Illinois Legislature had ended up here in a four-room cabin in last year's faded dress, washing greasy dishes. When she realized in September that she was with child again, she wept.

  That despair was a low point, for Hetty was fascinated by the prospect of a new baby, and did her work more cheerfully thereafter. By the time Lincoln came home, full of enthusiasm at the possibility that had been discussed among the Illinois Whigs to nominate him for Congress, Mary had regained her good humor, and had begun to make plans for the new child.

  But her pregnancy was accompanied as the first had been by devastating migraines. And as she chased the now-mobile Bobby around the house and through the vegetable garden in the back and out into the mud-wallow of Jackson Street, she could not rid herself of the feeling of being overwhelmed by events which she ought to have been able to manage, but was not.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  LINCOLN WAS OF LITTLE HELP TO HER AT THIS TIME. IN ADDITION TO riding the judicial circuit—he'd acquired a buggy to do it in, now, instead of simply going horseback with a couple of saddlebags—he was working the political circuit, and was gone most of the fall. The choice of Whig candidates for Congress came down to himself and Edward Baker, the cheerful little Englishman who had been one of Lincoln's partners in defending the Trailor brothers for the murder of the not-quite-dead Archibald Fisher.

  That summer Baker was a frequent guest at the gatherings of politicians that took place in the little parlor of the Eighth Street house.

  It was at such times that Mary was happiest: the mistress of her own house, however small, and a hostess whose burnt-sugar cake and intelligent conversation were not soon forgotten. Listening to the talk of the growing Democratic strength, and the threats of war with Mexico, Mary felt that she'd finally earned her chair around the stove—even if the stove was her own hearth and not the one in Speed and Bell's store or the Sangamo Journal offices.

  From such discussions, and reading the newspapers, she was often able to help Lincoln hone his speeches—he would reword his thoughts a dozen times, and practice them on her: “Are you sure you want your prose to sound that purple?” she sometimes asked. Or, “Do you think it will help your cause to make a personal attack that way?” She recalled the aborted duel with Jimmy Shields. By Lincoln's thoughtful expression, so did he.

  In his political dealings, Lincoln never forgot a face or mislaid a name, always remembered something to ask about family or acquaintances. He never told a lie, but, lawyerlike, committed himself rarely to any specific course of action. He never made a promise that he was not prepared to keep.

  Even when, in the discussions of rotating the Whig Congressional seat among the several leading Whig Party members, he facetiously offered to name his unborn child after Baker if Baker agreed to step aside in his favor, he surprised Mary by holding to that promise when Baker did, in fact, decline the nomination. “I thought you'd want to name your son after Joshua Speed,” she said, that evening after their guests were gone and he was helping her and Hetty clear away the coffee-things and brush the tablecloths. “He is still your best friend, isn't he, even away in Kentucky?”

  “He is, and I do,” he replied. “No, you sit down,” he added, as Mary started to follow him into the little kitchen, “you been on your feet all evening.” Mary sat obediently, in the chair that Baker had occupied. She had worked hard to set a good table, knowing from her own upbringing how good hospitality invisibly smoothed the edges of politics. This was probably the last gathering at the house before she began to show her condition to the point that it would be improper for a lady to appear in public.

  Vexing, she thought resignedly, but it couldn't be helped. Betsey's pushiness in joining the men's discussions while visibly pregnant had always annoyed her.

  “A rose by any other name is going to smell just as sweet,” he said, and put his arm around her shoulders. “If Baker steps aside and I name my boy Joshua, that'll tell the entire state, Lincoln doesn't keep his promises.”

  Mary glanced up at him with a sidelong grin. “And if Baker steps aside and I have a girl, what are you going to do then, Mr. Smart Politician?”

  “Name her Edwina,” said Lincoln promptly. “Or shoot myself.”

  After that evening, as Mary expected, there were no further political suppers, but she felt satisfied in a way she hadn't, approaching Bobby's birth. She had learned, at her father's knee and at Henry Clay's elbow, the difference between a small-time politician and one whom state leaders and legislators took seriously. Her instincts told her that when she had met Lincoln, for all his brilliance he had been perceived as a backwoodsman, not only by Ninian and Elizabeth, but even by his friends. A man doesn't tell a man, Don't say “ain't got” and don't wipe your hands down your front after a meal. He only thinks, What a hick! And passes on, to vote for a man who looks like he knows what he's doing.

  Teaching Lincoln the finer points of table-manners was a little like teaching Bobby (or Hetty)—only Lincoln understood why he needed them. “No one,” Mary had told him once, “is going to campaign on behalf of a man who eats with his hands. Not for Congress, anyway.”

  At least Bobby didn't have thirty-five years of eating with his hands to unlearn.

  But after that evening, though he was in town for the county court session, Lincoln was seldom at home. He opened his own law firm as a senior partner that year, with, of all people, the chinless Billy Herndon, who had previously been a clerk in Speed's store. As migraines added to the fatigue of advanced pregnancy and the exhaustion of trying to keep up with a very stubborn and active two-year-old, Mary noticed that Lincoln spent more and more time at his law office, often working on late into the night. More often, she suspected, yarning with Billy—who worshipped him with an irritating possessiveness—or stopping by Irwin's store to talk politics around the stove. Of course the house was small, she thought resentfully. And of course he could have no peace there, for reading or for thought....Did he think she had any peace? Or was able to settle down with a newspaper or a book?

  On Christmas Day there was a final, resounding quarrel with Harriet—with Lincoln caught in the middle as usual—and the girl returned to Coles County. Mary and Harriet made up before her departure and both shed tears as Harriet and Lincoln got on the stage, but Mary felt, along with loneliness and disappointment, relief that she was gone.

  Living with Lincoln was difficult enough without the complications of a growing young woman in the house.

  Even when he was home, Lincoln frequently wasn't home. His self-absorption when his mind was abstracted with some thought was absolute. Mary could stand a foot away from him and say, “Bring in the kindling,” and he wouldn't turn his head, would simply go on gazing into space. Piecing together tomorrow's arguments for Court, or assembling points for a speech to deliver in Petersburg next week. When she wasn't tired out from cooking and cleaning, and when her head didn't ache, Mary was in awe of the amount of information her husband could deal with solely in his head.

  But half an hour later, when after three more requests the kin
dling box was still empty, she'd go over and give his hair a hard twist, and he'd look up at her in surprise, as if he'd just realized he had a wife, let alone a house, a kitchen, an old-fashioned hearth that was wretched to cook on (unlike Elizabeth's new, modern iron stove), a kindling box, and a son whom he was supposed to be watching and who was nowhere in sight with darkness falling....

  There were times when Mary wondered if marriage to Edwin Webb—or the handsome Nate Bodley and the demands of running Indian Branch plantation with a staff of slaves—would not have been an easier way to live.

  Then some night she'd be tangled back in her old nightmare, of hiding in the dark hallway of her father's old house on Short Street, of hearing baby Georgie crying in the terrible stillness. The smell of blood and sickness, lamplight falling suddenly through an opening door. Her heart would hammer and she'd fight to wake up, fight not to be there when they carried her mother out of the room and away down the pitch-black hall—If I scream maybe I'll wake myself up....

  But no scream would come, only whimpering moans that echoed those from that other room in her dream....

  Then big gentle hands would shake her, and she'd roll over and clutch at those hard arms, that iron chest, and he'd rock her like a child, singing some old mountain ballad under his breath until she slept.

  EDDIE'S BIRTH PASSED ALMOST UNNOTICED IN THE DOUBLE INTENSITY of the Supreme Court sessions and the beginnings of a campaign for the Congressional Session of 1847, over a year hence. This time in addition to the midwife, Frances's husband, Dr. Wallace, attended, and both Frances and Elizabeth were there. (Ann was at a taffy-pull at Julia Jayne Trumbull's.) While Mary rested, panting, between bouts of pain, Elizabeth came in with a cup of hot tea for her, aproned and pink-faced from the heat of the hearth, a shirtsleeved Lincoln at her heels. In spite of her pain Mary had to smile, wondering how the two of them got along, sharing work in that tiny kitchen. Afterwards Lincoln came in, holding Bobby by the hand, a tubby little boy of two and a half with that revolting, inward-turning blue eye.

  “There, you see?” Lincoln told the child softly. “Your mother's just fine. And now you got a little brother to play with.”

  Bobby only looked doubtful, and reaching over Mary's sheltering arm, gave the tiny red bundle a sharp poke—which resulted in a most gratifying yowl. Bobby looked startled, but pleased.

  As soon as Mary was on her feet again, and not in the same room with Eddie's cradle and Bobby's little bed, Bobby repeated the experiment whenever he could, prodding his brother out of sound sleep for the pleasure of hearing the noise. Of course, by this time Lincoln was on the road again, meeting with the Whig leaders in Jacksonville. Mary tried reasoning with her elder son, but finally dealt with the situation by giving him a sharp slap the next time she was brought from the kitchen by Eddie's wails. It solved the Bobby-poking-Eddie problem—Bobby never did it again and indeed quickly came to feel protective of his brother—but thereafter Bobby developed the habit of simply disappearing.

  She would be sweeping the floor—an endless task, in a town that was perpetually either fogged with dust or drowned in mud—or peeling potatoes in the kitchen, then suddenly turn in panic, realizing she hadn't heard the scurry of his steps since . . . when? “Bobby's run away!” she would cry, and pelt through the kitchen door, looking around the vegetable garden, the laundry shed, Clarabelle's stable. Jackson Street was often filled with wagons and horses, coming and going to the new construction of houses, offices downtown, the new church on Third Street. The thought of that sturdy little boy running into the muddy road, being struck, being carried home dead by strangers, sent her rushing into the yard. “Bobby will die! Bobby will die!”

  She couldn't explain this fear, not even to Lincoln, any more than she could explain why thunderstorms turned her weak and sobbing. When Lincoln was in town she'd send whichever hired girl was working for them that week flying down to the law offices to fetch him. When he wasn't, she'd run next door and enlist young Jimmy Gurney in the search, and send out the hired girl, too. She lived in dread that she would be too late. That strangers would come to her and tell her that her son was dead, through her neglect. The son with whom she was never quite comfortable, whose deformed eye filled her with the double guilt of both responsibility and revulsion.

  Hetty's presence at least had given Mary the illusion that she had “help,” though she suspected her covert conflict with the girl hadn't helped Bobby's wary secretiveness any. Hetty's departure put Mary in the same position as every other woman in town she knew with the exception of Elizabeth: Frances, Julia Trumbull, Bessie, Merce Conkling, and all the rest were in constant quest for Irish or Portuguese girls who were willing to work and could be trusted not to steal silverware or entertain their boyfriends on the premises the moment their mistress's back was turned.

  Yes, slavery was wrong, Mary reflected. Cash Clay, and Mr. Garrison of The Liberator, and the other abolitionists were correct when they said that the ownership of slaves destroyed the souls of the masters and eroded society from top to bottom....

  But obviously neither Cash nor Mr. Garrison had ever tried to find somone willing to help with the cleaning for a price that wasn't extortionate.

  It was all very well for Elizabeth to look down her nose and make remarks like, “Oh, you haven't yet begun your spring-cleaning?” in a voice that implied that anyone who hadn't finished spring-cleaning by mid-April was an irredeemable slattern. Elizabeth's husband was rich, Elizabeth had three house servants and a coachman, and Elizabeth wasn't laid up for three days at a time with migraines. At times Mary looked back on her days as a belle in Lexington, and on those gay excursions with Stephen Douglas and James Gillespie and little cock-a-hoop Jimmy Shields—looked back on herself, in her gowns of pink silk and rose-colored velvet ribbons—and wondered who that was that she was looking at, and what had become of that girl.

  Wondered what had ever possessed her to marry a man who was poor and in debt.

  Except that she could imagine living with no one else. On those rare occasions—extremely rare, that summer of 1846—that she did live with him, she reflected wryly, or have more of him than his name on the nameplate of the front door.

  And then suddenly it was September, and Lincoln was striding through the brown leaves of the kitchen walk calling out, “Molly! Molly!” to bring her to the door in her apron. “We're elected! It's official! I'm junior Congressman for Illinois and we're going to Washington!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  TO MARY'S INTENSE GRATITUDE, THE CONGRESSIONAL TERM TO which Lincoln was elected wouldn't start until December of 1847. She couldn't imagine trying to travel with an infant and a boy of three. “Are you sure you want to come?” asked Lincoln, once Mary's first spate of triumph, plans, and delight had run itself down. The current hired girl, Bridget, had joined them in the kitchen, leaning on her broom and beaming in vicarious delight. Bobby sat on Lincoln's knee, Mary being in occupation of most of his lap.

  “Are you ashamed to be seen with a wife in tow, Mr. Congressman?”

  “One so pretty, and dressed so fine as you? Never.” He kissed her, something that always made Mary blush, for she had seldom seen Ninian kiss Elizabeth or her father kiss Betsey. It was one of the things Elizabeth considered ill-bred about her gangly, unwanted brother-in-law. “But we'll be living in a boardinghouse. Most Congressmen do.”

  “And what of that?” asked Mary. And, seeing a world of remembrances about Mrs. Beck in the lift of his brows, she added, “Pish, I was just a girl then, and didn't know how to go on. I hope I've learned a little more about the world by this time.” She tousled Bobby's blond hair and kissed him, and leaned up to kiss her husband's hollow cheek. “To be able to attend Washington parties, to mingle with the makers of our country's law and policies, I daresay I could be happy living in a tent.”

  “And that's one in the eye for Mrs. Edwards,” added Bridget—which of course had been the first thing Mary had thought, though she hadn't said it.

&nbs
p; It seemed like there was so much to do, in the next year! Winter and spring, and a blazing-hot summer that seemed never-ending . . . She went shopping at Irwin's with Julia Trumbull and tall Cousin Lizzie—now Lizzie Grimsley, where did the time go?—and the three of them spent happy weeks studying Godey's and sewing and furbishing up dresses that would be fit for Washington parties.

  That spring of 1847 the newspapers were filled with the war with Mexico, whose bellicose President Santa Anna had begun arming the moment the Republic of Texas applied for inclusion in the United States. Fighting broke out in April across the whole northern segment of Mexico that Congress had been trying to acquire by negotiation for years. The United States claimed the Mexicans had crossed the border to attack. Torchlight rallies were held. Militia companies formed overnight and rushed toward the Rio Grande. Southern slaveholders and land speculators pricked their ears at the prospect of new cotton lands to replace the worn-out soil of Alabama and the Carolinas.

  One minute it seemed like forever until the Lincolns' projected departure, and the next, they were packing to leave. Lincoln found a renter for the house, and spent all of one October day moving their furniture up into the northernmost of the little slant-roofed attic rooms while Bobby did his best to get underfoot on the narrow attic stair and kill them both.

  Then they were all getting on the stagecoach, under gray autumn skies.

  Despite the proud dome of the sandstone State House, Springfield looked very small across the golden swell of the prairie.