Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (34 page)

“Yes, bring your friend also,” Mrs. Lincoln said graciously, and then, as if she had almost forgotten, “and do come in time to dress me before the speaking commences.”

“I will,” Elizabeth promised. “You may rely upon that.”

Mrs. Lincoln nodded and swept from the room. Moments later, through the window, Elizabeth watched her step from the house to the street, where she ascended into her carriage and drove away.

Elizabeth thought of Virginia, and she thought of Emma, and she wished that she had asked Mrs. Lincoln if two friends could accompany her. But since it was too late to amend her request, she decided to invite Emma. Her young assistant attended every speech of Mr. Lincoln’s that she could, including the second inaugural address, which she had described so well for Elizabeth. Since she admired the president so much, it seemed only right to offer her the opportunity to hear him speak from a place of honor within the White House.

Thrilled, Emma immediately accepted the invitation, and so at seven o’clock, they entered the White House through the front door, as Elizabeth had done alone countless times before. On the way upstairs to Mrs. Lincoln’s chamber, Elizabeth touched Emma’s arm, a silent signal that they should tread softly. As they passed Mr. Lincoln’s room, they slowed their pace and glanced through the half-open door. The president was seated at his desk, looking over his notes and muttering to himself, his expression thoughtful, his manner abstracted. Elizabeth paused for a moment to watch him, knowing that he was rehearsing and refining the words he would soon speak not only to the crowd gathering outside, but to the entire nation and beyond, for everyone would read his remarks in the papers in the days to come. When the president spoke, his words traveled around the world, so each one had to be selected with care.

When they reached Mrs. Lincoln’s rooms, Emma waited outside while Elizabeth swiftly dressed Mrs. Lincoln in yellow silk and arranged her hair with early spring blossoms. Mr. Lincoln appeared just as Elizabeth was finishing, and they both graciously agreed to allow Elizabeth to introduce Emma to them. Elizabeth hid a smile as the young woman shook their hands and managed to chat politely with them for a brief moment, even though the unexpected honor left her quite tongue-tied.

Great crowds had gathered in front of the White House, and over the music of the Marine Band, loud, eager calls were made for the president to appear. When he finally advanced to the center window above the door, a thrilling roar went up from the throng assembled in the darkness below. Looking out from another second-story window nearby, where she and Emma stood as equals among many distinguished ladies and gentlemen, Elizabeth could scarcely breathe from amazement. She had never seen such a mass of people before, like a black, gently swelling sea in the night, the motion of the crowd like the ebb and flow of the tide upon the stranded shore of the ocean. The faces near the front were clearly discernible, but they faded into ghostly outlines farther away. Lending the scene a weird, spectral beauty was the indistinct hum of voices that rose above them all, reminiscent of the subdued, sullen roar of an ocean storm or the wind sighing through a dark, lonely forest. It was a grand, imposing scene, and when the president regarded it all with a piercing, soulful gaze as he waited for the cheers to subside, he seemed to Elizabeth more like a demigod than a mortal man.

Every window of the White House was illuminated by hundreds of tiny candles arranged in tiers on slender strips of wood, but the flickering candlelight must have seemed insufficient, for at once a cry went up for someone to fetch a lamp. When it was brought, Elizabeth heard little Tad cry, “Let me hold the light, Papa! Let me hold the light!”

Mrs. Lincoln gestured and said something that Elizabeth could not make out, but she must have asked for her son’s wish to be granted, for the lamp was passed to him.

“We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart,” the president began, and a hush fell over his listeners. “The evacuation of
Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression cannot be restrained.”

Yes, Elizabeth thought, yes, and the compassion and thankfulness in his voice filled her heart until it seemed to lift her upward. Emma drew in a breath and touched Elizabeth on the arm, and Elizabeth knew that her young friend was as moved by the striking tableau as she was—father and son standing together in the presence of thousands of free citizens, the elder pronouncing eloquent ideas for the fate of a nation, the younger looking up at him with proud admiration.

Elizabeth stood not far from the president, and after he praised the military and turned to the fraught subject of reconstruction, the light from Tad’s lamp fell fully upon him, so that he stood out boldly against the night. A sudden, chilling thought struck Elizabeth then, and drawing closer to Emma, she murmured, “What an easy matter it would be to kill the president, as he stands there! He could be shot down from the crowd, and no one would be able to tell who fired upon him.”

Bleakly, Emma nodded. Elizabeth could hardly pay attention to the rest of the speech, so afraid was she that one of the many vicious men who had sent him violent, threatening letters lurked within the shadowed throng below. Only a few days before, Elizabeth had overheard Mrs. Lincoln requesting additional protection for her husband, and soon thereafter officers from the Metropolitan Police had been posted at the White House to handle new threats of arson, kidnapping, and other terrors. But since then, General Lee’s surrender seemed to have eased Mrs. Lincoln’s perpetual worries, at least a little. Even so, Elizabeth found herself seized by an intense, foreboding dread that the president’s enemies had not abandoned their hatred when General Lee conceded defeat at Appomattox.

Suddenly Emma clutched her arm, and a smile lit up her face. Pulled from her dark reverie, Elizabeth quickly picked up the threads of the president’s speech. “It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man,” Mr. Lincoln said, referring to criticism of the new Louisiana state constitution. “I would myself
prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.”

Elizabeth managed just in time to muffle a gasp. Unless her ears were deceiving her, the president had just told the world that he approved of enfranchisement for black Union soldiers and certain other men of color.

“Can he mean it?” Emma asked in a whisper. “Will our men be permitted to vote?”

“I think they will be,” Elizabeth whispered in reply, a thrill of excitement putting a tremble in her voice. Perhaps that would be only the beginning. Perhaps the lady suffragists would finally have their way too. Elizabeth could imagine the obstacles tumbling over one after the other like books on a too-crowded shelf: First colored soldiers would be allowed to vote, and then prominent black men, and then all black men, and then white women, and last of all but finally, women of color like her and Emma and Virginia. It could happen. Some people had said that slavery would be with them forever, and yet it had been abolished. Good people with strong convictions could overturn any injustice if they simply refused to quit. But even as she took heart, Elizabeth could not forget that the march to justice had ever been arduous and long, and the changes she yearned for might not come within her lifetime.

But she had already witnessed so many remarkable events since coming to Washington City. Why might not universal suffrage be another?

Elizabeth’s thoughts were still full of the night’s splendors when she went to the White House the following Saturday, and yet, after thanking Mrs. Lincoln for allowing her and Emma to attend, something compelled her to mention the sudden apprehension she had felt when Mr. Lincoln stood dangerously illuminated and vulnerable before the crowd.

“Yes, yes, Mr. Lincoln’s life is always exposed,” Mrs. Lincoln agreed, sighing. “Ah, no one knows what it is to live in constant dread of some
fearful tragedy. The president has been warned so often that I tremble for him on every public occasion. I have a presentiment that he will meet with a sudden and violent end.”

“I suppose it is only natural that you should worry,” said Elizabeth, thinking again of the dreadful letters Mr. Lincoln received nearly every day. Mrs. Lincoln received her fair share too, though not as many as her husband.

Mrs. Lincoln shook her head. “I said
presentiment
. I’m not speaking of ordinary worries and fears that might plague anyone in my circumstances, any wife whose husband has made enemies. The sensation is much too powerful for that.”

Mrs. Lincoln seemed so certain, so despondent, that Elizabeth wished she had never encouraged her when she had consulted spiritualists after Willie’s death. Surely one of them had planted this sepulchral notion in her head when she was tormented with grief.

She was quiet too long, for Mrs. Lincoln frowned and said, “I know that look. You think I’m being foolish, but you’re too polite to say so. Well, what would you think if I told you Mr. Lincoln shares my beliefs?”

“I—would not know what to think,” said Elizabeth, taken aback.

“He has had several premonitions himself.” Mrs. Lincoln pressed her lips together and inhaled deeply, and a furrow appeared between her brows. “The first came to him a few days after the election in 1860, when we were still in Springfield. The weight of his new responsibilities was settling upon him, and he was having trouble sleeping. He was in his office chamber reclining on a lounge, when his gaze fell upon the mirror and he saw his image reflected with two faces, one much paler than the other. He was very unsettled by the sight, and little wonder. I believe the vision meant that he would be elected twice, but not live out his second term.”

Shaken, Elizabeth nonetheless mustered up enough skepticism to ask, “Mr. Lincoln himself believes this was a vision, not merely a trick of the light upon a poor glass and weary eyes?”

“Well, if he did not say so, it was evident from his manner. But there have been others. He has a strange recurring dream preceding events of great significance. He describes himself as aboard a ship—he cannot
describe it but he knows it always to be the same vessel—moving swiftly toward a dark and indefinite shore. He had this dream before Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg.”

“Goodness.” Elizabeth shivered as if Mrs. Lincoln’s very words carried a chill. “But if this dream is somehow prophetic, it seems to presage victory, not death.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Suddenly tears sprang into Mrs. Lincoln’s eyes. “But I have not yet told you the worst of his dreams. I truly wish he had never told me.”

“Why, Mrs. Lincoln.” Alarmed, Elizabeth took her by the elbow and guided her to a seat on the sofa. “Perhaps we’ve dwelt too long on this subject—”

“No. No. I’ve begun and I must tell you the rest.” Mrs. Lincoln took out her handkerchief, dabbed at her eyes, and distractedly twisted the fine white cloth into a rope on her lap. “Only a few days ago, Mr. Lincoln and I were chatting with his guard Mr. Lamon and a few others when the conversation turned to the abundance of dreams in the Bible. ‘If we believe the Bible,’ my husband said, ‘we must accept the fact that in the old days God and His angels came to men in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams.’ When I asked what had prompted the remark, he first asserted that he did not believe in dreams, and then he went on to describe a dream that he’d had a few nights before, and which has strangely annoyed him ever since.”

“What was this dream?” asked Elizabeth uneasily, though she almost didn’t want to know.

“He told us that about ten days before, he had retired very late because he had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. He was not long in bed when he fell into a weary slumber and began to dream. He said there seemed to be a deathlike stillness about him, and then he heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. In the dream he left his bed and wandered downstairs, where the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. Though he searched from room to room, and saw no one, the same mournful sounds of distress met him everywhere he went. The rooms
were lit, and every object was familiar, but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? He became puzzled and alarmed, wondering what could be the meaning of all this. Determined to find the cause of circumstances so mysterious and so shocking, he kept on until he arrived at the East Room—where he met with a sickening surprise. Before him was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Soldiers were standing guard all around while throngs of people gazed mournfully upon the deceased, whose face was covered, and some wept pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ my husband demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The president,’ came the answer. ‘He was killed by an assassin.’ Then a loud, terrible wail of grief went up from the mourners and woke him.”

“How dreadful,” exclaimed Elizabeth. No wonder the president had grown so gaunt and weary, if such terrible imaginings plagued him at night. “But, Mrs. Lincoln, you must not fear that this nightmare will come to pass.”