Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (24 page)

Mrs. Lincoln stayed away from Washington for nearly two months. In all that time, Elizabeth sewed for other ladies and dedicated the rest of her hours to the Contraband Relief Association, raising funds from
abolitionists and well-to-do people of color from throughout the North and teaching sewing and other practical skills to the women and girls residing in the camps. She took on a few promising young freedwomen as apprentice seamstresses, and with their earnings they were able to afford rooms in pleasant boardinghouses and escape the camps, which seemed perpetually squalid despite the bedding and other small comforts Elizabeth and the other volunteers provided for them. Her young assistants bloomed in their new lives, mentored by Elizabeth and Emma, their eager guides to all things a young woman of color needed to know in order to successfully navigate Washington City.

During Mrs. Lincoln’s absence, the president was preoccupied with the hard business of war. The Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg seemed, to him, to mark a turning point, but the weeks following those costly triumphs were not without setbacks. The valiant but ultimately bloody and unsuccessful attack of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts upon the Confederate stronghold Fort Wagner near Charleston was especially heart wrenching for the Negro community, for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts was one of the first official colored regiments and a great source of pride for their race. Their casualties in the fierce assault were shockingly high, so reports of their courage and heroism were bittersweet. Elizabeth was proud that the men of her race had acquitted themselves so nobly and had inspired more colored men to enlist, but she mourned for them, and prayed for their wives and mothers.

Shortly before Mrs. Lincoln returned to the capital, Elizabeth heard other sad news from the battlefield—sad for the Lincolns personally, at any rate, although not for the Union. Mrs. Lincoln’s brother-in-law, the Confederate general Ben Helm, husband of her beloved half sister Emilie, had been killed at the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia. Years before, on the advent of war, Mr. Lincoln had offered his favorite sister-in-law’s husband a generous commission as paymaster of the Union Army, but Mr. Helm had declined and had enlisted with the Confederates instead. After Shiloh, he had been promoted to brigadier general and had gone on to lead the famed “Orphan Brigade,” Kentucky’s most
celebrated infantry unit. Now he was gone, and their darling “Little Sister” was in mourning, but the Lincolns could not publicly grieve for a rebel.

Soon thereafter, only a day or two after Mrs. Lincoln returned home, word spread that her youngest half brother, Captain Alexander Todd, had been killed the day before his brother-in-law General Helm while serving as his aide-de-camp at the Battle of Baton Rouge. Aleck had been only an infant when Mrs. Lincoln had left home, but the red-haired, cheerful boy had been everyone’s favorite, and Elizabeth knew Mrs. Lincoln was very fond of him.

When Elizabeth next received a summons to the White House, she departed at once, eager to see her best patron again after so many weeks apart. Mrs. Lincoln greeted her warmly, clasping her hands and smiling, and declared theirs the happiest of reunions. Elizabeth was relieved to see that Mrs. Lincoln’s health seemed almost entirely restored to her, but an air of sadness lingered about her that Elizabeth could only assume sprang from her recent losses.

They had been discussing new dresses for the upcoming social season for only a few minutes when Mrs. Lincoln suddenly said, “Elizabeth, I have just heard that one of my brothers has been killed in the war.”

Elizabeth was taken aback by the lack of emotion in her words. “I also heard the same, but I hesitated to speak of it, for fear the subject would be a painful one to you.”

“You need not hesitate.” Mrs. Lincoln attempted a matter-of-fact smile, but her lips trembled. “Of course, it is but natural that I should feel for one so nearly related to me, but not to the extent that you suppose.”

Elizabeth did not know what to say. “Indeed?”

Mrs. Lincoln clasped her hands in her lap and studied them. “Aleck made his choice long ago. He decided against my husband, and through him against me. He has been fighting against us, and since he chose to be our deadly enemy, I see no special reason why I should bitterly mourn his death.”

“I suppose not,” Elizabeth replied slowly, torn between relief and
regret. She was thankful that Mrs. Lincoln did not appear possessed by the same madness of despair that had seized her after Willie’s death, but she knew Mrs. Lincoln felt deep sorrow over the loss of her kin, rebel or otherwise, all the same. To feign indifference was an act for her critics, for the spiteful masses who eagerly snatched up any crumb of proof, however tenuous, of the First Lady’s disloyalty. It was not a pretense she needed to maintain in front of Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was very sorry that her patron and friend could not be perfectly honest with her so that she could offer her the comfort her broken heart surely needed.

Months earlier, in springtime, Mrs. Lincoln’s longtime social rival Miss Kate Chase had become engaged to the wealthy former Rhode Island governor and current United States senator William Sprague IV, and their November wedding in the parlor of the Chase mansion was anticipated to be the social event of the season. Fifty guests, including President and Mrs. Lincoln, the cabinet secretaries and their wives, and certain senators, congressmen, and generals had been invited to the ceremony, and five hundred more would join them at the reception. When Elizabeth mentioned to Mrs. Lincoln that she would be sure to keep that afternoon open so she would be available to dress her for the occasion, Mrs. Lincoln told her that would not be necessary. “I believe I will have a terrible headache that day,” she said lightly.

“But, Mrs. Lincoln,” protested Elizabeth, “aren’t you worried about how it will look if you don’t attend? Everyone of quality in Washington will be there.”

“I rather worry what it would say if I did attend,” Mrs. Lincoln retorted. “You know those Chases, father and daughter alike, have always believed that they belong in the White House rather than us. Mr. Chase has spent the last three years in the high office my husband bestowed upon him making friends and setting himself up as an alternative candidate, and he would be all too delighted to snatch the Republican nomination away from Mr. Lincoln. I absolutely refuse to promote the
daughter through any political favor to the father, nor will I promote the father by offering social preference to the daughter. They are my husband’s rivals, Elizabeth, and therefore also mine.”

Elizabeth understood Mrs. Lincoln’s point of view, and yet it filled her with misgivings. Although Mrs. Lincoln was frequently indisposed, surely no one would believe her excuse of illness if she failed to appear at the wedding, and her critics would concoct their own wild theories that would invariably cast her in an unflattering light. Mr. Lincoln must have concurred, for when his entreaties for her to accompany him failed, he attended the wedding alone and lingered at the reception for two hours as if to compensate for his wife’s absence.

Elizabeth wished she could have attended the wedding reception, if only to observe the guests in their finery. Several of the ladies had been attired in gowns of her creation—Mrs. Mary Jane Welles’s lovely rose moiré antique and Mrs. Elizabeth Blair Lee’s stunning off-the-shoulder crimson silk were especially fine examples of her handiwork, she thought—and she would have taken both pride and pleasure in comparing her handiwork to that of other mantua makers. Like many other Washingtonians who had not been invited, Elizabeth eagerly read descriptions of the wedding in the papers the next day. The new Mrs. Sprague was said to have been resplendent in a bridal gown of white velvet with a needlepoint lace veil, a diamond solitaire ring worth four thousand dollars sparkling on her graceful hand. As she had entered the room, the Marine Band had played “The Kate Chase March,” composed by Mr. Thomas Mark Clark especially for the occasion. Most of the papers listed the most prominent guests, among whom President Lincoln ranked highest. A few reporters pointedly noted that Mrs. Lincoln was not present, but only one cattily mentioned her “sudden and curious” illness and added a wholly insincere wish for a swift recovery from her “uncannily timely affliction.”

But it was Tad Lincoln who truly did fall ill only a few days after the wedding. His symptoms were frighteningly reminiscent of the illness he had suffered in the winter of 1862, the same illness that had claimed his brother’s life. His parents became increasingly worried as he began a
familiar decline. Elizabeth tended him as she had his brother, and Nurse Pomroy was always on call. Mr. Lincoln had agreed to offer a few appropriate remarks at the dedication of a new national cemetery in Gettysburg, but the day before he was scheduled to depart, Mrs. Lincoln begged him not to go. “Mother, it is my duty,” Elizabeth heard him tell his wife, and when she burst into tears and declared that he was a better bureaucrat than a father, the wounded, dispirited look in his eyes pained Elizabeth so much that she had to look away. She had never known another man with such nobility of soul and greatness of heart, and she wondered why Mrs. Lincoln sometimes seemed blind to her husband’s exemplary qualities. Over time, Elizabeth had come to believe that Mr. Lincoln was unselfish in every respect and that he loved his children and their mother very tenderly. He asked for nothing but affection from his wife, but he did not always receive it. When one of her wayward, impulsive moods seized her, she often said and did things that wounded him deeply. If he had not loved her so much, she would have been powerless to hurt him, but he did care about her and about her opinion of him. She often hurt him in unguarded moments, but afterward, in times of calm reflection, she would not fail to regret her cruel words.

This, Elizabeth thought, would surely be one of those occasions.

The next day, Elizabeth arrived at the White House to find Tad bedridden, Mrs. Lincoln hysterical, and President Lincoln deeply melancholy as he prepared to leave for the train station. “Tad was too ill to eat his breakfast this morning,” Mrs. Lincoln told her, wringing her hands as she turned back to her husband. “Please, Father, don’t go. Mr. Everett will be offering the oration. You said yourself that your remarks are secondary. You would not be missed.”

“I flatter myself that I would be,” he said, wearily putting on his coat and hat. Mrs. Lincoln stopped pacing long enough to submit to his kiss good-bye, but as soon as he departed, she burst into tears. Elizabeth hurried to offer her a handkerchief, led her to the sofa, and tried to calm her with soothing words, but Mrs. Lincoln had worked herself into a frenzy and would not be comforted. Eventually Elizabeth persuaded
her to sit quietly, and she sent for a soothing cup of tea, and by noon, the hour Mr. Lincoln’s presidential train was scheduled to depart, she had managed to compose herself. Reminding Mrs. Lincoln that she must remain calm or she would frighten her son, Elizabeth accompanied her to Tad’s sickroom, where he promptly sat up in bed and asked for something to eat.

Relief illuminated Mrs. Lincoln so vividly that it was as if a shaft of sunlight had broken through storm clouds. She immediately sent word to the kitchen to prepare her son’s favorites, and when they were brought up to him on a tray, he ate slowly, but with a steady appetite. When he lay down again, Mrs. Lincoln and Elizabeth left the room to let him rest under Nurse Pomroy’s watchful eye. “Mr. Lincoln was not feeling well himself this morning,” Mrs. Lincoln remarked in an undertone as they returned to the sitting room. “I do hope he won’t exhaust himself on this trip.”

Elizabeth nodded, carefully keeping her expression mild. Just as she had predicted, now that the crisis had passed, Mrs. Lincoln regretted the harsh words she had hurled at her husband before his departure. “Mr. Hay and Mr. Nicolay will look after the president,” she reminded the First Lady. “They are traveling with him, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes. They’ve made up quite a party.” There was a slight edge to Mrs. Lincoln’s voice. “Although it’s smaller than it could have been.”

“Tad was too ill to travel,” Elizabeth protested, “and you were needed here to look after him.”

“Oh, dear me, I wasn’t speaking of us, Elizabeth. Certain others, who were invited to come, declined the president’s invitation.”

“Who?” asked Elizabeth, surprised. “And why? I should think it would be quite an honor to travel with the president for such an important occasion.”

“One
would
think so, unless one were Secretary Chase—not that his refusal surprises me—or Secretary Stanton, or Senator Stevens, who used to be a reliable friend.” Mrs. Lincoln lowered her voice. “They do not believe my husband will win reelection, and they wish to put some distance between themselves and him so that none of his so-called failures will reflect upon them.”

“Of course he’ll win,” said Elizabeth, indignant. “As for those men—I’m astonished by their disloyalty after all he’s done for them.”

“With few exceptions—very few—his cabinet secretaries are loyal to no one but themselves,” Mrs. Lincoln replied darkly, and then she felt silent for a moment, thinking. “I believe I’ll send my husband a telegram to let him know that our Tad is feeling better. That will ease his mind, I have no doubt.”