Just that morning, the Chicago Tribune had published a sympathetic editorial—not to grieve the lady’s friends or to pander to curiosity, they emphasized, but to assure the concerned public that Mrs. Lincoln had been treated in the most kindly and gentle manner throughout the proceedings, and that she had maintained her dignity and character as a cultivated lady. For years she had suffered under the mental strain of losing three sons to illness and having her husband cruelly assassinated before her eyes; the dreadful scenes playing over and over in her mind’s eye ever since had worn away her reason. When her increasingly distracted thoughts and erratic behavior had suggested that she might come to some harm, Robert had finally had no choice but to seek to have her committed. “This proceeding, and the circumstances attending it, had long been foreseen by her intimates,” the article concluded, “and it was postponed as long as affectionate regard could allow.”
What intimates? Ann had wondered as she read the final lines. Mary’s sisters certainly had not been consulted, and they knew more about her long, fraught history of “distracted thoughts and erratic behavior” than anyone. Ann could have shared a few significant facts with that panel of concerned friends and learned physicians, facts that might have swayed their decision. Not that Mary shouldn’t remain exactly where she was for a while, if only to teach her a lesson. She had carried her ploys for attention and sympathy too far this time, and now she must suffer the consequences.
Mary was hardly the only woman to have lost children and a husband, Ann thought, stung by sudden contempt. Ann herself had lost her precious firstborn son, and the dreadful war had rendered their forcibly reunified country a land of widows and orphans and broken survivors. The other Todd sisters, though, like the vast multitude of women North and South alike, had never behaved as disgracefully as Mary had, embarrassing herself and shaming her family. Mary was always landing in the newspapers with some new, outrageous scandal: her pathetic pleas to Congress to provide for her as the widow of the great martyred savior of the nation; her restless wanderings from health spa to Spiritualist retreat in search of comfort; her defensive, very public responses to the offensive claims made by Mr. William Herndon in the biography he had written about Abe, his former law partner. Granted, the book and the many speeches associated with its publication were a disgrace to journalism, reeking with egregious lies and some of the most maliciously distorted scenes ever to travel from frenzied brain to poison pen, but the appropriate response would have been dignified silence. Mary had occasionally managed to act with dignity, but silence seemed beyond her abilities.
Except when it came to cutting out of her life someone whom she accused of wronging her. Then Mary could achieve perfect stubborn silence, even when the person in question was a once-cherished friend, such as Mrs. Elizabeth Keckly, her longtime dressmaker and erstwhile confidante. Even when the person was a sister.
What would the panel of distinguished gentlemen have made of that?
No examination of Mary’s aberrant behavior could exclude that dreadful business in New York back in 1867 when she had enlisted Mrs. Keckly in her scheme to raise funds and public sympathy by selling off her wardrobe, a painfully embarrassing episode still snidely referred to as “the Old Clothes Scandal.” Even that was presaged by her behavior as first lady, her spending sprees while the nation was engulfed in war, running up extraordinary debts buying lavish monogrammed china and fringed silk shawls while brave Union soldiers shivered in frosty encampments without blankets. Ann had found all too credible the rumors that Mary padded legitimate White House refurbishing bills with her own expenses, rumors that had run rampant almost from the beginning of her husband’s administration. Ann had learned to avoid certain acquaintances whenever she went out in Springfield or visited family in Lexington because invariably they would interrogate her about Mary’s latest antics. The inquisitors would frame their words in the guise of innocently polite inquiries about her family, but their eager glee never failed to reveal their true purpose.
Ann was tired of making excuses for or feigning ignorance about Mary’s conduct. Why should she embrace the role of Mary’s apologist? Mary apparently never once paused to consider how her behavior would reflect upon her sisters, the damage she would do to their prospects and fortunes. Never, it seemed, did she regret how poorly she repaid her family’s love and loyalty, an affront Ann had experienced personally on more than one occasion. In those winter months before President-Elect Lincoln departed for Washington, for example, when throngs of ambitious office-seekers and newspapermen had descended upon Springfield, had it not been Ann and her husband, Clark Smith, who offered Abraham a quiet refuge in the backroom on the third floor of Clark’s dry goods store so he could write his inaugural address in peace? Since the early days of Abraham’s administration, Clark had displayed that desk in the large storefront window facing the courthouse square in his honor. It still drew curious passersby inside, where, after admiring the artifact of the martyred president, they often browsed and bought something. What if one day Mary’s scandals obliged Clark to remove the desk from view? The store’s receipts would drop precipitously, and even though Clark had four other successful shops scattered about the region, the Smiths could not take their income for granted. Had Mary given that a single passing thought? Could she not for once consider how her reputation affected them all?
As for the sage journalists’ opinings that the tragedies Mary had suffered as a wife and mother had driven her insane, Ann could attest that her eccentricities had manifested long before she suffered these losses. Even as a child, Mary had desired fine things and the latest fashions more than modesty allowed, but more troubling was how she had always harbored excessive ambition and flaunted an unladylike interest in politics. When she was twelve years old, she had repeatedly begged their father to run for president because she yearned to live in the White House. At mealtimes and rare moments when their father relaxed with the family in the garden, Mary would pounce, imploring him to seek the office so earnestly that tears filled her eyes. Only when her father firmly, unequivocally refused did she join him in supporting his candidate of choice—Mr. Henry Clay, the former US senator, speaker of the House, and secretary of state, one of Lexington’s leading citizens, and Papa’s dear friend.
A year later, when Mary was a precocious girl of thirteen, she had ridden two miles from home to Ashland, Mr. Clay’s gracious country estate. She had interrupted a dinner party, but Mr. Clay indulgently had led his guests from the table outside to admire her new pony and then invited Mary inside to join them at the table.
She was seated at his right hand, and during a lull in the conversation she said, “Mr. Clay, my father says you will be the next president of the United States. I wish I could go to Washington and live in the White House.” She frowned, wistful. “I begged my father to be president, but he only laughed and said he would rather see you there than to be president himself.”
“Well, if I am ever president,” Mr. Clay had replied, charmed, “I shall expect Mary Todd to be one of my first guests. Will you come?”
Mary eagerly accepted, adding, “If you were not already married, I would wait for you.”
The guests burst into laughter, and sensing that it was at her expense, Mary graciously excused herself and left the party. Thoroughly pleased with herself, she had trotted home and boasted to her sisters about the invitation. Elizabeth had smiled and congratulated her, but Ann and Frances, heaving sighs of exasperation, had declared that their father’s esteemed friend was only being polite. He might be president one day, but he would never invite little Mary Todd to the White House.