Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (51 page)

“I cannot,” Elizabeth insisted. “Nor should I. They are in the wrong. These reporters cannot offer any specific examples of poor writing in my book. They can only claim that it is worthless in a general sense while they impugn my character. And all the while they insist upon referring to me as Mrs. Lincoln’s Negro servant as if I were a—a housemaid or a kitchen girl rather than an accomplished seamstress. They say I desecrated the memory of President Lincoln, a man I admired and respected with all my heart. I cannot let those accusations stand unchallenged.”

Seeing that she was resolved, Mr. Redpath reluctantly suggested that she write a rebuttal, which he would forward to the editor of the New York
Citizen,
a gentleman who happened to be one of Carleton & Co.’s bestselling authors. Immediately Elizabeth took up her pen in her own defense, challenging her critics to read her book alongside the pages and pages that respected newspapers from across the nation had committed to the “bitter crusade” against Mrs. Lincoln. Which of them, she asked, had truly betrayed and scandalized the former First Lady? “Is it because my skin is dark and that I was once a slave that I am being denounced?” Elizabeth demanded. “As I was born to servitude, it was not fault of mine that I was a slave; and, as I honestly purchased my freedom, may I not be permitted to express, now and then, an opinion becoming a free woman?”

The resoundingly unanimous response of the public was that she could not.

Not long after her refutation appeared in the
Citizen,
someone left a small, flat package for her on the doorstep of her boardinghouse, wrapped in brown paper with “Mrs. Kickley” printed in block letters upon it. Curious, Elizabeth unwrapped it—and suddenly discovered that the misspelling of her name had been no accident. The gift of her anonymous enemy was a booklet entitled
Behind the Seams; by a Nigger Woman who took work in from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis
. The ostensible author, “Betsey Kickley (nigger),” had signed the book with an X, indicating that she was illiterate.

Her heart thudded as she opened the booklet and allowed her gaze
to skim over the lines of text, enough to determine that it was a cruel, vicious parody of her memoir. Sickened, she threw it away, but she could not erase the taunting image from her thoughts—stacks and stacks of the booklet flying off newsstands and bookstore shelves, people throughout the country savoring its ugliness with malicious glee.

Her own book, she soon discovered, had become much harder to find. The controversy and the accusation that it was an “indecent” book had discouraged many booksellers from stocking it, and as time passed, Elizabeth heard convincing rumors that a furious Robert Lincoln had ordered her publisher to recall the book, and when that failed, he and his friends bought up all the copies they could, and had them burned.

Elizabeth felt as if she had plunged into a nightmare. She wrote impassioned, apologetic letters to Mrs. Lincoln but never received so much as a single word in reply. When she discovered that Robert Lincoln was visiting the city, she sent him a note imploring him to let her call on him so she could apologize in person, but he flatly refused to see her. White people closed ranks against her, the colored woman who had dared scrutinize someone so high above her station, and even those who disliked Mrs. Lincoln denounced Elizabeth for betraying her and for dishonoring Mr. Lincoln’s memory by revealing intimate scenes from his family life. Her own people were upset with her because they worried that white employers would be reluctant to hire colored servants, for fear that their own secrets would be written up in scandalous books. Despondent, smoldering with indignation and disappointment and embarrassment, Elizabeth nonetheless held her head high, even when several of the seamstresses for whom she had sewed suddenly discovered that they no longer had any piecework to assign her.

With her income sharply diminished, sales of her book became more important than ever. When she called on Mr. Redpath to inquire about receipts, he said that the book had not yet sold enough to pay for the costs of printing and distribution. To help increase sales, he proposed arranging public lectures, one in New York and one in Boston, and if those went well, they would consider expanding the series to other cities. “Chicago, perhaps?” prompted Elizabeth, eager for an
opportunity to call on Mrs. Lincoln and offer her in person the apologies and explanations she deserved.

“We’ll see,” said Mr. Redpath affably.

In the third week of June, Elizabeth read aloud from her book to an audience of no more than three dozen ladies and gentlemen at a Manhattan bookstore, a third of them her own good friends who had come to show their support. As for the rest, Elizabeth soon realized from their queries and comments that they could be divided into three groups: the curious, drawn by the press’s claims of indecency and scandal and hoping to witness some of each; people who despised Mrs. Lincoln and were glad to see her brought low; and unrepentant secessionists and other political enemies seeking evidence to confirm their suspicions of treachery, indecency, and corruption in the Lincoln administration. At the end of the evening, only Elizabeth’s friends went home satisfied.

“Mrs. Elisabeth Keckley, the eavesdropper of the White House, seeks to increase the sale of her dirty book by reading selections from it,” the
Springfield Daily Republican
sneered two days later. “She attempted at New York, Tuesday evening, but failed utterly and deservedly, and to-night will make an effort at Boston. She reads more poorly than she writes, and that is as bad as can be.”

Notwithstanding the power of the newspaper’s warning to beckon curiosity seekers, the turnout at the Boston event at Lee & Shepard was slighter than that of her first reading but composed of much of the same sort of people. Thus Elizabeth was relieved rather than disappointed when Mr. Redpath informed her that Carleton & Co. did not intend to arrange any more lectures for her, although they certainly encouraged her to do so on her own, if she wished.

Elizabeth emphatically did not.

She had too much dignity to rail against the unfairness and injustice of her circumstances. She understood that she was mired in scandal and that every movement she made to climb out of it only dragged her in deeper.

She could not count how many times through the years had she observed Mrs. Lincoln similarly entangled. Mrs. Lincoln’s instinct had
been to fight ferociously to salvage her reputation, sending scores of letters to garner support, evoking the power of her husband’s high office to demand the deference due to her as his wife, using patronage to forge alliances and appease enemies, and, when all else failed, fleeing the scene and leaving faithful friends to clean up the mess she left behind.

Mrs. Lincoln’s tactics had never succeeded, not that Elizabeth could remember.

If Mrs. Lincoln’s example had taught her nothing else, it had shown her that the only way to redeem oneself from scandal was to live an exemplary life every day thereafter.

And that was precisely what Elizabeth intended to do.

W
hen the furor subsided, Elizabeth quietly moved back to Washington, where Virginia, Walker, and Emma welcomed her warmly—and kindly said nothing of her book or the scandal. She reopened her dressmaking business, summoned her former assistants, and sent out letters to her patrons announcing her return, but during her long absence, many of her assistants had found other employment or had gone into business for themselves. Some of her favorite patrons soon placed orders with her for garments for the winter social season, but many more demurred. Although they never said so, Elizabeth was certain they stayed away because of her book.

She wrote again to Mrs. Lincoln seeking forgiveness, to let her know she had returned to Washington if Mrs. Lincoln wanted to reply. The next time Mrs. Lincoln visited Washington, Elizabeth vowed, she would apologize sincerely and profusely in person. And Elizabeth would present to her a gift of her heart and hands three years in the making, and as yet unfinished—the quilt she had begun on the train to Chicago, when she had accompanied the grieving widow on her departure from the White House.

Pieced of silks left over from Mrs. Lincoln’s gowns, the quilt struck the eye as predominantly red, blue, gold, and white, although other colors appeared too, tans and lavenders and ashes of rose. In the center Elizabeth had appliquéd and padded a bold eagle clasping a flag in his talons, wings outspread, the word “Liberty” embroidered beneath him in gold. Around the central emblem she had added three concentric borders, the first of gold silk embroidered with flowers along the sides and black silk cornerstones. The second was simpler, tan pieces along the top and bottom and a black-and-white stripe along the sides. Next she had attached borders of dark blue and blue-gray, and cornerstones of light tan, intricately embroidered with flowers, sprigs, and other ornaments. She planned to frame the central medallion with borders of Grandmother’s Flower Garden hexagons joined in clusters of seven and separated by contrasting rhombuses, giving the traditional design the effect of a radiating star, but those segments were still in progress. After that, she did not think the quilt would be quite finished; it would need another concentric border or two, and perhaps another embellishment, such as a scalloped edge or fringe, something she could not yet envision. For a while she worked swiftly—fewer patrons meant fewer dresses, which meant more idle hours to fill—hoping to complete the quilt in time to present it to Mrs. Lincoln when she next returned to Washington.

But although Mrs. Lincoln returned to the capital in September for her son Robert’s marriage to Miss Mary Harlan, she seemed to abhor the city, for to the best of Elizabeth’s knowledge, she made no other visits. Elizabeth was sure she would have heard if she had, for the newspapers continued to follow her comings and goings, her struggles with her finances, and her attempts to persuade the government to raise her pension.

It was from the newspapers that Elizabeth learned Mrs. Lincoln and her son Tad had left for Europe, where they were expected to embark upon a lengthy tour. Mrs. Lincoln reportedly hoped to recover her health, which had worsened of late, and to seek respite from the disappointments and humiliations at home. Some wags, recalling the
notorious memoir of Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker, noted that she had once declared that she would prefer to leave the country and remain absent throughout his term of office should General Grant be elected president of the United States. Perhaps, they impertinently suggested, that was why she planned to stay abroad so long. Elizabeth did not believe for a moment that Mrs. Lincoln had taken Tad abroad to avoid the Grant administration. Surely Mrs. Lincoln was fleeing grief and unhappy memories—one of which, Elizabeth could only assume, was the ruin of their friendship.

With a pang of regret and sorrow, Elizabeth carefully packed the unfinished quilt in the trunk where she kept the leftover fabric from Mrs. Lincoln’s gowns. She hadn’t the heart to work on it anymore, not knowing when, or if, she would ever see her estranged friend again.

Even practicing the closest economy, Elizabeth found it difficult to make ends meet. The book that had cost her so much had paid her nothing, so quietly she sued Carleton & Company for half of the profits from her memoir. She did not prevail in court, and therefore she did not receive a single cent, nor were Mrs. Lincoln’s letters ever returned to her.

From time to time, Elizabeth would spot Mrs. Lincoln’s name in the newspaper and read about her travels in Germany, Scotland, England, France, and Italy. In 1870, while Elizabeth was struggling to rebuild her dressmaking business, she learned that Senator Charles Sumner had pushed through Congress a bill granting Mrs. Lincoln an annual pension of three thousand dollars, which President Ulysses S. Grant promptly signed. Delighted, Elizabeth immediately wrote Mrs. Lincoln a congratulatory letter, expressing her heartfelt joy at the well-deserved benefit and long-overdue justice. She said nothing of their estrangement, hoping that perhaps Mrs. Lincoln’s long months away had given her time to reflect on the great many occasions Elizabeth had demonstrated her loyalty and friendship, and that perhaps she might extend a hand in forgiveness. Elizabeth sent her letter to the residence in Frankfurt am Main last reported in the papers, but no reply came. Not long
thereafter, in May 1871, she read that Mrs. Lincoln and Tad had left Germany for England a few months after Elizabeth had written to her and from there had returned to Chicago. Wistfully, she wondered if her letter had arrived too late, and if even at that moment it sat unopened on a table in Mrs. Lincoln’s unoccupied rented rooms in Germany. How tragic it would be, she thought, if that letter would have provoked the tender, forgiving reply she had longed for, but the opportunity for reconciliation had been lost, all for the mischance of one letter gone astray.