Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (37 page)

On April 17, the president’s casket was set upon the finished catafalque beneath a black canopy, mirrors and chandeliers draped with black crepe, seats on risers covered in black cloth erected for the mourners. The mood was hushed and somber as an honor guard of two generals and ten other officers kept watch day and night. Nearly twenty-five thousand people passed through the East Room to pay their respects the following day, and on April 19, invited guests returned for the funeral service. Mrs. Lincoln and Tad could not bear to attend, but Robert did, the sole representative of the family. Elizabeth wanted to see the president one last time before he was laid to rest, but Mrs. Lincoln needed her more, so she remained at her side.

After the service, a funeral procession carried the president’s remains to the Capitol, where he lay in state in the rotunda so that thousands more could file past and pay their respects. On Friday, April 21, nearly a week after the president’s death, a nine-car funeral train bedecked with bunting, crepe, and a portrait of Mr. Lincoln on the cowcatcher left Washington on a seventeen-hundred-mile journey westward to Springfield, carrying three hundred passengers and the remains of the president and his young son Willie. The Lincoln Special traveled at only five to twenty miles per hour out of respect for the thousands of mourners who had assembled along the rail lines, lighting the way with bonfires at night. The train made scheduled stops in twelve cities, where
tens of thousands gathered to mourn and to bid farewell to their fallen leader.

For six weeks Elizabeth remained at the White House with the distraught widow, sleeping on a lounge in her chamber at night, comforting and soothing her as best she could throughout the long, sorrowful days, rarely leaving her side. Mrs. Lincoln’s closest friends in Washington, Mrs. Mary Jane Welles and Mrs. Elizabeth Blair Lee, attended her sometimes too, but she denied admittance to nearly everyone else. The new president, Mr. Andrew Johnson, did not try to come to see her, nor did he send even so much as a brief note to express his sympathies. It was said that on that terrible night he had tried to enter the Peterson residence to see the president on his deathbed but had been turned away lest the sight of him upset the First Lady. However much that might have offended him, in Elizabeth’s opinion, the only right, respectful, and dignified thing to do was to put aside his hurt feelings for the sake of the grieving widow. At first Elizabeth attributed his neglect to the demands of his sudden elevation to head of state, but as time went on and he still sent no condolences, she became appalled and indignant. She only hoped that Mrs. Lincoln in her sorrow would not take notice of his inexplicable affront.

Mrs. Lincoln did not often speak of Mr. Booth, her husband’s murderer, but Elizabeth knew she brooded over who else might have been complicit in the assassination. A new messenger had accompanied the Lincolns to the theater that terrible night, and it had been his duty to stand at the closed door of the box throughout the performance, guarding the president and his party from intrusion. It soon came to light that this new messenger had become engrossed in the play, and had neglected his duty and gone off to watch it, allowing Mr. Booth easy admission to the box. Mrs. Lincoln had convinced herself that this man was implicated in the plot against her husband.

One evening, Elizabeth was lying on her lounge near Mrs. Lincoln’s bed when a servant entered the room and Mrs. Lincoln asked her who was on watch that night.

“Mr. Parker, madam,” she replied. “The new messenger.”

“What?” Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed. “The man who attended us to the theater on the night my dear, good husband was murdered! He, I believe, is one of the murderers. Tell him to come in to me.”

From Mr. Parker’s wide-eyed and wary expression upon entering, Elizabeth knew he had overheard Mrs. Lincoln’s words through the door, which had been left ajar.

“So you are on guard tonight,” Mrs. Lincoln fiercely addressed him. “On guard in the White House after helping to murder my husband!”

“Pardon me, but I did not help to murder the president,” Mr. Parker protested, trembling. “I could never stoop to murder—much less to the murder of so good and great a man as the president.”

“But it appears that you
did
stoop to murder.”

“No, no! Don’t say that,” he pleaded. “God knows that I am innocent.”

“I don’t believe you. Why were you not at the door to keep the assassin out when he rushed into the box?”

“I—I did wrong, I admit,” he stammered, “and I have bitterly repented it, but I did not help to kill the president. I did not believe that anyone would try to kill so good a man in such a public place, and the belief made me careless. I was attracted by the play, and did not see the assassin enter the box.”

“But you should have seen him,” Mrs. Lincoln snapped. “You had no business to be careless. I shall always believe that you are guilty. Hush!” she exclaimed as he attempted to reply. “I shan’t hear another word. Go now and keep your watch.” She dismissed him with an imperious wave of her hand. White-faced and stiff, Mr. Parker turned and left the room. As soon as the door closed behind him, Mrs. Lincoln fell back upon her pillow, covered her face with her hands, and burst into sobs.

Robert Lincoln was tender and solicitous of his mother in her grief, but his haggard looks revealed that he suffered greatly and shouldered his new responsibilities as head of the household heavily, though he never failed to put up a brave, strong front in his mother’s presence. Robert endured his mother’s fits of anguish better than his poor younger brother, who had lost one parent to death and feared losing
another to grief. Often at night, when the bereft Tad was awakened by his mother’s sobs, he would pad down the hall from his room to hers and climb into her bed. “Don’t cry, Mama,” he would say, hugging her tightly. “I cannot sleep if you cry! Papa was good, and he has gone to heaven. He is happy there. He is with God and brother Willie. Don’t cry, Mama, or I will cry too.” And Mrs. Lincoln would again endeavor to stop crying for his sake.

Elizabeth’s heart went out to the boy. He and his father had adored each other, but as much as Mr. Lincoln had doted on him, especially after losing Willie, Tad had never grown spoiled. Despite his youth, he had seemed to understand that he was the son of a president, and that this had bestowed upon him both privileges and responsibilities. Early one morning, Elizabeth passed by his room when his nurse was dressing him. “Pa is dead,” she heard him say to his nurse soberly. “I can hardly believe that I shall never see him again. I must learn to take care of myself now.”

Her heart aching for him, Elizabeth drew closer to the door to listen.

“Yes, Pa is dead,” he went on, mournful and matter-of-fact, “and I am only Tad Lincoln now, little Tad, like other little boys. I am not a president’s son now. I won’t have many presents anymore.” He sighed, a soft and forlorn sound. “Well, I will try and be a good boy, and will hope to go someday to Pa and brother Willie, in heaven.”

Elizabeth pressed her lips together and hurried on before she broke down. She had to be brave. Mr. Lincoln would have wanted her to be strong for his wife and family. It was the last service she could do for him, and she could not bear to fail.

Mr. Lincoln’s sons understood the practical matter of their new circumstances sooner than their mother, whose grief had consumed her every thought, waking and sleeping, since her husband’s death. President Johnson, in a singular act of generosity, had allowed the grieving family to remain in the White House while he lived under guard at a residence on Fifteenth and H streets and worked out of a small office in
the Treasury Building. Eventually, however, Mrs. Lincoln realized that his patience would not last forever, and she had to prepare to leave.

“God, Elizabeth,” she once exclaimed, after the bleak awareness dawned, “what a change! Did ever a woman have to suffer so much and experience so great a change? I had an ambition to be Mrs. President; that ambition has been gratified, and now I must step down from the pedestal. My poor husband! Had he never been president, he might be living today. Alas! All is over with me!”

Elizabeth tried to comfort her, but her words rang hollow, and she knew it.

Mrs. Lincoln folded her arms and rocked herself back and forth. “My God, Elizabeth, I can never go back to Springfield! No, never, until I go in my shroud to be laid by my dear husband’s side, and may heaven speed that day! I should like to live for my sons, but life is so full of misery that I would rather die.”

Keening, she pressed her fists against her eyes and wept hysterically, and although Elizabeth desperately wished to give her solace, she knew nothing she could do would suffice, nothing she could say would bring her peace. Time would do what she could not, Elizabeth hoped grimly, as she watched and waited by Mrs. Lincoln’s side.

M
rs. Lincoln could not bear to go to Springfield, but she had to go somewhere.

Some of Mr. Lincoln’s closest friends urged her to return to Springfield, to the home she still owned there, at least until her husband’s estate was settled. He had died without a will, so although his property would eventually go to his wife and children, they would not receive their shares of his estate until the legal knots were untangled. Mrs. Lincoln adamantly rejected the idea of returning to Springfield. She had burned too many bridges in her former hometown and had become the subject of gossip. She was estranged, at least in part, from her sisters and half sisters, even Little Sister Emilie and the faithful Elizabeth Edwards. Most of all, as she confided to Elizabeth, she could not bear to set foot in her once-happy home on Eighth and Jackson, where she knew she would be tormented by memories of the early years of her marriage and the husband and children she had lost. But Elizabeth knew, as the well-meaning gentlemen did not, that Mrs. Lincoln also had to take care to find a residence she could afford, since her debts to her favorite stores had climbed to at least seventy thousand dollars. Elizabeth
thought it a blessing that Mr. Lincoln had not learned of his wife’s debts before he died, and had been spared that anger and embarrassment.

In the meantime, letters of condolence continued to arrive from all corners of the nation and from foreign heads of state. Mrs. Lincoln read them all, quoted aloud to Elizabeth from the most tender and sympathetic, and replied to as many as she could, tears streaming down her face as she wrote. One letter in particular she cherished above all the others.

“The queen indeed understands my suffering,” Mrs. Lincoln said the first time she read the letter, and said again, with greater feeling, each time she reread it. Once, as she returned the letter to its envelope, she added that the queen was truly blessed in that no one had driven her from her home the moment she became a widow. “That, Elizabeth,” she noted with a sad, tearful smile, “is the difference between being a widowed First Lady of America, and a widowed Queen of England.”

Elizabeth was glad Mrs. Lincoln found comfort in Queen Victoria’s words, and, wanting to be kind, she did not point out that no one had
driven Mrs. Lincoln from her home the moment she had become a widow either. Elizabeth would allow that President Johnson had been more than patient, permitting her to stay on for weeks and weeks, forgoing the use of the White House residence, offices, and reception rooms that were rightfully his. But that scant, unspoken acknowledgment was all that Elizabeth would grant him. Mrs. Lincoln had become aware that Mr. Johnson had never sent any written condolences, nor had he called upon her to express his sympathies. Robert, who had taken responsibility for communicating with the new president’s staff during the transition, complained indignantly about Mr. Johnson’s neglect of proper form, but his mother was even more upset and angry. If the Queen of England could find time to write a thoughtful letter, surely a new president elevated by his predecessor’s death could too. It was shameful, Mrs. Lincoln declared, absolutely shameful, that a letter could cross the Atlantic Ocean in less time than Mr. Johnson required to cross the street.

But the White House
was
his, after all, and though Mrs. Lincoln desperately clung to the tatters of her former life as long as she could, eventually, reluctantly, she decided to settle in Chicago. Mr. Lincoln had intended to retire there after his second term, she said, and it was a city that had always been good to him. It was in Chicago that he had received his first nomination as the Republican candidate for president, a place reminiscent of triumph, not despair. The city was also reasonably close to Mr. Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield, where Mrs. Lincoln imagined she might seek solace in the years to come.