Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (36 page)

Elizabeth woke abruptly in the dark of night to an incessant pounding on her door. “Mrs. Keckley,” someone called. “Mrs. Keckley, please get up!”

Disoriented, Elizabeth sat up, groped for her dressing gown, and pulled it on. The pounding and calling persisted as she climbed from bed and hastened to the door. “Miss Brown?” she said, confused, as she discovered her boardinghouse neighbor in the hall. “What’s the matter? Is there a fire?”

“No, no, not a fire, but terrible news, terrible news!” Miss Brown wrung her hands, tears on her cheeks. “Mr. Lincoln has been shot, and the entire cabinet has been assassinated!”

Elizabeth’s heart lurched. “Assassinated?” Images of the men she had seen through the years at the White House—smiling, scowling, whispering urgently in corners, striding intently about the president’s business, laughing at his stories—flew through her mind. Her blood felt as if it had been frozen in her veins, and her lungs as if they would collapse for want of air. “Dear God, all of them dead? And Mr. Lincoln? Was he badly hurt?”

Miss Brown shook her head. “No, praise heaven. He was not mortally wounded.”

“Oh, thank God. And Mrs. Lincoln?”

“Unharmed—at least, I have heard nothing about any injury done to her.”

Heart pounding, Elizabeth thanked her neighbor and hurried back into her room to dress. It was after eleven o’clock, but sleep had fled, and she could not bear to sit patiently awaiting news when it felt as if the house could not contain her. She dashed outside, where the streets were full of wondering, fear-struck people. Rumors flew thick and fast, some confirming Miss Brown’s account, others contradicting it, still more offering even wilder, more terrible reports. Elizabeth grew ever more frustrated and frightened until worry compelled her back indoors, where she woke Walker and Virginia and told them the president had been shot. “I must go to the White House,” she said, her voice breaking. “I cannot remain in this state of uncertainty.”

“Elizabeth, dear,” said Virginia, her face stricken beneath her muslin nightcap. “You must calm yourself. Mr. Lincoln must be recovering just fine, or the bells would be tolling all over the city.”

“Virginia’s right,” said Walker, but he too looked apprehensive. “You’ve had a shock. Go back to sleep. You can call on Mrs. Lincoln first thing in the morning.”

“No, no.” Elizabeth shook her head, her heart jumping and fluttering like a trapped bird in her chest. “I must go to her now. Even if the president was only slightly injured, Mrs. Lincoln will be upset, and she will want me.”

The Lewises exchanged a silent look, and then Walker agreed that Elizabeth should go, but she should not go alone. Elizabeth paced in the foyer while the couple dressed and told Jane to look after her younger sisters. It seemed an eternity until Virginia and Walker joined her and they headed out into the night. They made their way swiftly through the milling throng, scores of confused and alarmed people questioning one another and repeating rumors and sometimes breaking into loud, gasping sobs. On the way through Lafayette Square, they
passed the residence of Secretary Seward and were shocked to find it surrounded by armed soldiers, bayonets drawn to keep back all intruders. Alarm quickening their pace, they hurried on until they reached the White House and found it too surrounded by soldiers. Every entrance was strongly guarded, and no one was permitted to pass.

Elizabeth drew herself up, summoned all her strength of will, and addressed a guard at the gate firmly. “I am Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley, the First Lady’s personal modiste and friend. If she is in distress, she will want me.”

The soldier ignored her, his gaze moving steadily over the crowd gathering in front of the White House, his grip tightening around his rifle. Elizabeth felt Virginia nudge her discreetly, and so she quickly took another breath and said, “Ask the doorman who I am. I am here at the White House several times a week. He will know me.”

The soldier again ignored her, but another standing a few feet away took pity on her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but no one is allowed to enter tonight.”

Quickly, desperately, Elizabeth whirled upon him. “Would you please have the doorman send word to Mrs. Lincoln that I am here? I know she will tell you to let me in.”

The guard, a red-haired, freckled lad little older than George would have been, shook his head. “She isn’t here, and the president hasn’t been brought home either.”

The first guard sucked in his breath through his teeth and glared at the red-haired soldier, who promptly tore his gaze away from Elizabeth and snapped to attention. Neither of them would say anything more, so reluctantly, and with an increasing sense of sickening dread, Elizabeth, Virginia, and Walker left the White House. As they made their way through the milling throng toward home, Elizabeth felt weak from grief and anxiety. A few blocks along, she glimpsed a gray-haired elderly man passing, and something of the kindness and sorrow in his expression compelled her to reach out, touch his arm gently, and imploringly ask, “Will you please, sir, tell me whether Mr. Lincoln is dead?”

“Not dead,” he said, “but dying. God help us!” With a heavy step he continued on his mournful way.

“Not dead but dying,” said Virginia, her voice trembling. “Then indeed, God help us all!”

Eventually, in bits and fragments they collected on their way to Twelfth Street, they assembled the shocking story. The president lay mortally wounded, some said in a residence across the street from Ford’s Theatre, but no one knew for certain. The popular actor John Wilkes Booth had stolen into the president’s private box while he watched the performance with Mrs. Lincoln and their guests, and had shot him in the back of the head. Mr. Lincoln was not expected to live until morning.

Hearts crushed and broken, Elizabeth, Virginia, and Walker returned home.

Once there, Elizabeth could not sleep. She imagined Mrs. Lincoln wild with grief and wanted to go to her, but she did not know where she might be, and she had no choice but to wait until morning. Never had the nighttime hours dragged so slowly. Every minute seemed an eternity, and Elizabeth could do nothing but pace and wait and watch the eastern sky through her window for the coming of dawn, hugging her arms to her chest as if warding off a bitter wind.

Morning came at last, gray and somber. At half past seven, a distant church bell began to toll, and then another joined it, and another, until all the bells in Washington resounded with the terrible news. The president was dead, Elizabeth thought numbly, and then a sob escaped from her throat, and she flung herself onto her bed, anguished and weeping. She covered her ears with clenched fists, but nothing would block out the mournful sound.

She lay there still, exhausted and drained, at eleven o’clock, when a carriage drove up to the boardinghouse and a messenger rapped on her door. “I come from Mrs. Lincoln,” he said. “If you are Mrs. Keckley, come with me immediately to the White House.”

Elizabeth hastily threw on her shawl and bonnet, and within moments she was seated in the carriage and speeding toward the White House through a cold and dismal rain. The gas streetlamps were usually extinguished by that time of day, but that morning they had been left burning. The streets were unnaturally hushed for a late Saturday
morning. Flags hung in cheerless folds at half-staff, and here and there, shops and houses were draped in black crepe. A lone sentry paced back and forth in front of a house, and in front of another farther along, and after a moment of bewilderment Elizabeth recognized the residences as those belonging to cabinet members. Miss Brown had been mistaken when she had told Elizabeth that they had all been assassinated, but at nearly the same time Mr. Lincoln was shot, Secretary Seward had been attacked in his own home, in bed where he lay recovering from a carriage accident. If not for the neck brace he wore due to his injuries, he likely would have been stabbed to death. As it was, he had been terribly wounded and might yet perish, and no one could say what plots against the other secretaries had been thwarted, had been abandoned, or had yet to be enacted.

Soon the carriage reached the White House, where Elizabeth saw hundreds of colored folks, mostly women and children, milling about on the lawn, weeping and lamenting their loss. Unlike the previous night, this time she easily passed through the gate and by the guards and up to the very front door, but once she crossed the threshold into the silent, somber house, she felt as if a heavy shroud of grief had been draped over her shoulders. Steeling herself, she removed her bonnet and hurried upstairs, but Mrs. Lincoln was not in her bedroom, nor in the family sitting room. Before long, a servant with red-rimmed eyes guided her to a small spare bedroom that had been made up for Mr. Lincoln to use during the summer, when the family resided mostly at the Soldiers’ Home and Mr. Lincoln spent only occasional nights alone at the mansion. “The First Lady refused to be taken into any of the family bedrooms,” the servant confided. Elizabeth thought of how Mrs. Lincoln still avoided the room where her son Willie had been laid out for his funeral, and she understood why Mrs. Lincoln could not have gone to the chambers she had shared with her husband.

Elizabeth hesitated with her hand on the door, taking deep breaths to push back the sorrow that threatened to rise up and choke her. When she had composed herself, she entered the room and plunged into darkness. Her eyes adjusted, and she made out the dim shapes of a woman
tossing and turning restlessly upon the bed, and another sitting in a chair by the window, where the curtains had been drawn so barely a beam of pale sunshine leaked in. After a moment Elizabeth recognized Mrs. Mary Jane Welles, the wife of the secretary of the navy and one of her patrons. Nodding to her, Elizabeth hurried to Mrs. Lincoln’s bedside and murmured her name.

“Elizabeth?” Mrs. Lincoln’s voice was the barest of whispers. “You have come at last?”

Elizabeth took her hand. “Yes, Mrs. Lincoln. I’m here.”

Mrs. Lincoln slowly rolled over and looked up at her bleakly, her eyes red and swollen, her cheeks pale, her expression shocked and haggard. “Why did you not come to me last night, Elizabeth? I sent for you.”

Elizabeth blinked back tears. “I did try to come to you, but—” She fought to keep her voice steady as she lay her palm upon Mrs. Lincoln’s brow, which felt strangely feverish to the touch. “I could not find you.”

“I sent three messengers.”

“I’m sorry.” Elizabeth sat down on the edge of the bed, clutching Mrs. Lincoln’s hand in both of hers. “I did come. I did come, but you weren’t here.”

“They did not bring us here.” Mrs. Lincoln’s voice was distant, disbelieving. “They took my husband across the street from the theater to Mr. Peterson’s boardinghouse. My husband was too tall for the bed. They had to lay him upon it diagonally.” She choked on a sob and began to keen.

“Hush now,” Elizabeth said, stroking her brow. “Hush.”

While Elizabeth soothed her, Mrs. Welles, who did not look at all well and had left her own sickbed to answer Mrs. Lincoln’s summons, quietly excused herself and departed for home, entrusting Mrs. Lincoln to Elizabeth. She was nearly exhausted from grief, but Elizabeth endeavored to calm her. After she had quieted, Elizabeth gently asked if she might go pay her respects. When Mrs. Lincoln nodded, Elizabeth slipped her hand free and quietly left the darkened chamber and went alone to the guest room, where the president lay in state. As she crossed the threshold, heart pounding and legs trembling, she suddenly recalled the sight of young Willie Lincoln lying in his coffin in the same
place where his father’s body now lay in repose. In her mind’s eye she watched again as the president wept over the pale, beloved face of his boy, and she thought of how kindly Mr. Lincoln had spoken to her the last time she saw him alive, how generously and respectfully he had described the vanquished General Lee. The Moses of her people had fallen in the hour of his triumph. His tragic death was all the more heartbreaking because he had not lived to enjoy the peace he had toiled so long to achieve.

Several members of the president’s cabinet, a few army officers, and other dignitaries were grouped around the body of their fallen chief, some weeping openly, but they made room for her as she approached. Reverently she lifted the white cloth from the pale face of the man that she had so greatly admired—not merely admired, but looked upon as someone as divine as he was human. Her pounding heart grew calm as she looked upon his face; notwithstanding the violence done to him, she discovered something beautiful as well as grandly solemn in his expression—the sweetness and gentleness of childhood, the stately grandeur of inspired intellect. She gazed long upon him, until she was obliged to turn away, her vision blurred by tears, her throat constricted in grief.

Fighting to regain her composure, she returned to Mrs. Lincoln’s room to find her in a new paroxysm of grief—wailing, keening, convulsing terribly. Robert bent over her, murmuring, his expression pained and tender, while young Tad crouched at the foot of his mother’s bed, his face a world of agony. Elizabeth quickly went to her and bathed her brow with cool water, struggling to soothe the violent tempest as best she could. Tad’s grief was no less than his mother’s, but her frightening outbursts had shocked him into silence. Suddenly he threw his arms around her. “Don’t cry, Mama,” he begged, his voice muffled as he pressed his face against her neck. “Don’t cry, or you will make me cry too! You will break my heart.”

Mrs. Lincoln could not bear to hear her youngest son cry, and with a great effort, she clasped him to her heart and struggled to calm herself,
but she could not restrain her grief for long, and soon it burst forth again, alarming and heart wrenching to behold.

In the days following the assassination, every room in the White House was darkened, every voice low and subdued, every footstep heavy and muffled. Mrs. Lincoln sequestered herself in the small guest room with the curtains drawn, sometimes silent, sometimes weeping or shrieking. She could not bear to view her husband’s body, but the construction of a tall platform in the East Room to display her husband’s coffin intruded upon her seclusion. “When will they be finished?” she asked through clenched teeth, sitting up in bed, rocking back in forth in misery. “Every nail they drive is like a pistol shot.”