After her last piano student of the afternoon departed, Emilie went to the kitchen to pour herself a cool glass of water. She drank deeply, yet found no refreshment. Brooding, she wandered outside to the garden, seeking solace in the fragrance of verbena and pink dianthus, the warm colors of calla lily and zinnia, and the song of wood thrush and chickadee. The excessive heat and humidity of the day had stirred wistful memories of bygone summers at her mother’s country estate about twenty miles west of Lexington on the Frankfort Pike. In her memory, Buena Vista had been bathed in gentle sunshine and refreshing breezes from April through September, year after idyllic year. She knew, of course, that it must have rained sometimes, and that occasionally the weather must have been as sweltering and humid as the weather in Louisville that week, but such oppressive days never came to mind when she reflected upon the Buena Vista of her early childhood. After Papa had passed in the cholera epidemic of 1849 and their reduced circumstances had obliged her mother to sell their house in town and move Emilie and her siblings out to their erstwhile summer retreat to economize—well, those were different times, evoking memories of an altered, more complex hue.
How heartbroken Emilie had been, at the tender and complicated age of thirteen, to have lost her childhood home so soon after suffering the devastating loss of her beloved Papa! She had been born in that elegant brick residence on Main Street, and unlike her elder half-siblings, she had never lived in the house on Short Street, the one her mother had tried to make her own as a young bride and new stepmother. Her parents’ first child together, a son, had been born there a year after they were wed, but he had passed away in Ma’s arms a few days later. Soon thereafter, Ma began urging Papa to move the family to another home, one not shadowed by sad memories of lost loved ones.
Some acquaintances and gossipy neighbors murmured that Ma had really wanted to put some distance between herself and Grandma Parker, who glared down judgment upon her daughter’s successor from her hilltop home on their shared lot. Emilie had never heard her mother admit as much aloud, but if indeed it were true, who could blame her? It was difficult enough to embark on married life, raise six grieving stepchildren, and endure the loss of her firstborn without a jealous matron hovering nearby, watching her every move and assuring her she was doing everything wrong.
Papa must not have been willing to let go of the Short Street house, for he kept the family there even as it grew, with baby Margaret arriving in 1828, Samuel in 1830, and David in 1832. It was when Ma was expecting David that she began to suggest more emphatically that they find a larger home. Perhaps eager to escape his former mother-in-law’s scrutiny himself, Papa had bought the house on Main Street in 1832, and it was there that Ma brought five more Todd offspring into the world: Martha in 1833, Emilie in 1836, Alexander in 1839, Elodie in 1840, and Katherine in 1841. Though the new house was full of children, every so often Ma planted her hands on her hips, looked around, and remarked with great satisfaction that the house was spacious enough for them all, a claim impossible to make about their former home. As if to prove it, she had invited her niece and namesake, Betsey Humphreys, to live with them. Betsey and her half-sister Mary were the same age and quickly became inseparable playmates, with Mary as the instigator of merriment and mischief and Betsey her admiring companion. At first Ma had looked askance at their friendship, but she had eventually resigned herself to it, perhaps hoping that Betsey would be a good influence on her most willful stepdaughter.
Although Emilie had not come along until years later, she knew about Mary’s success at school and many other aspects of her childhood because amusing stories and cautionary tales featuring her escapades had become part of family folklore. Emilie recalled almost as vividly as if she had witnessed the events herself when ten-year-old Mary, tired of her girlish pinafores and longing for the more fashionable attire of a young lady, decided to improve her muslin skirt with the addition of a homemade bustle. Knowing Ma would never allow it, Mary enlisted Betsey to help her secretly gather willow branches from a neighbor’s yard. Mary then wove and tied the branches, contriving a makeshift bustle for each of them. They stealthily discarded the scraps and hid the bustles in their room until Sunday morning, when they rose early, donned their refurbished dresses, and slipped from the house to walk to church before anyone in the family saw them. Mary, the swifter of the pair, would have escaped, but Ma caught Betsey in the foyer, called Mary back into the house, looked them over from head to toe, and burst into laughter. “What frights you are,” she exclaimed. “Take those awful things off, dress yourselves properly, and go to Sunday school.” The girls obediently went upstairs to change, mortified and chagrined, with Mary weeping in anger over their ill treatment and ruined plans.
Mary’s girlhood passion for politics was also legendary among the Todds, Parkers, and Humphreyses, as well as most of their neighbors. Her ambition to live in the White House one day had seemed preposterous at the time but in hindsight had proved remarkably prescient. Her pony ride to Ashland to secure an invitation to the White House should Mr. Clay be elected still evoked chuckles from some of her siblings and exasperated sighs from others, but Mary’s spat with a friend during the election season of 1832 was less amusing, as it foreshadowed estrangements yet to come.
President Andrew Jackson had come to Lexington to campaign for reelection, and a grand procession through the city planned for the occasion would culminate in an enormous rally and barbecue at Fowler’s Garden. The entire city turned out for the parade. Democratic supporters lined the streets, cheering, shouting, unfurling banners plastered with political slogans, waving handkerchiefs, and holding up hickory twigs in honor of “Old Hickory” as he passed in an open carriage. Even staunch Whigs like the Todds and Parkers came out for the spectacle, for it was not every day that a president came to Lexington. Mary, observing through narrowed eyes the man whom her friend Mr. Clay hoped to unseat, remarked to a young Democratic friend clapping wildly beside her that she would never vote for General Jackson, but at least he was not as ugly as she had heard. When her friend protested that President Jackson was not any uglier than Mr. Clay, Mary coolly replied, “Mr. Henry Clay is the handsomest man in town and has the best manners of anybody—except my father. We’re going to snow General Jackson under and freeze his long face so that he will never smile again.”
“How dare you?” protested her companion. “Andrew Jackson with his long face is better-looking than Henry Clay and your father both rolled into one!”
That was too much for Mary. She and her erstwhile friend did not speak to each other again for several years.
Frances and Ann used this incident as evidence of Mary’s temperamental and obdurate nature, but Emilie sympathized, not only because the insult to their father offended her, but because she had suffered a humiliating incident of her own on Mr. Clay’s behalf. Twelve years after Mary’s altercation, when Mr. Clay was again attempting to unseat an incumbent president, Emilie was playing dolls with a friend when they overheard their parents in the other room discussing politics. Emilie mentioned how much she liked Mr. Clay, her friend spoke up for President Polk, and both insisted that her own favorite would win. Then Emilie’s friend said, “I bet you your doll that Mr. Polk will be reelected.”
This was a very special doll, the most beautiful doll either girl had ever seen, a gift Emilie’s father had purchased for her in New Orleans. Yet so certain was Emilie that the better man would triumph that she agreed to the bet. A few weeks later, after Mr. Polk won and her friend showed up to claim her prize, Emilie refused to give it to her. The ensuing argument brought Papa into the room to investigate, and when the girls tearfully explained the conflict, Papa solemnly said, “Emilie, you must give her the doll. It is highly dishonorable not to pay your debts.” Beaming jubilantly, her friend carried off the precious doll, while Emilie flung herself into her father’s arms, sobbing inconsolably. “This will teach you the dangers of gambling,” he told her, and although some might look at the choices she had made later in life and disagree, Emilie believed that she had taken those words to heart.
Mary would have sympathized with Emilie that day, no doubt, but she was eighteen years older and had already left home. Emilie had not yet turned three years old when Mary went to Springfield to live with Elizabeth and Ninian, where she would enjoy the lively social and political milieu and, everyone hoped, she would find a husband. In those days, traveling was arduous, and Mary had little reason to return to Lexington to visit, since, as even the youngest children knew, she and Ma did not get along. Thus, Emilie’s earliest memories of Mary were vague, built on stories shared by her elders and excerpts from her four married half-sisters’ letters home—Mary’s own words as well as passages written by Elizabeth, Frances, and Ann about her in tones that could be loving, exasperated, amused, or annoyed, depending upon the circumstances.
Emilie was almost eleven years old when Mary returned home for her first visit since her marriage, which none of the Lexington clan had attended, so swiftly had it been arranged. By then, Mary was a wife and mother of two young sons, and her husband was the newly elected representative of the Illinois Seventh District to the United States Congress. The Lincolns planned to spend three weeks with the Todds before continuing on to Washington, DC, so Abraham could assume his office, and the entire household had been bustling and bursting with excitement as they prepared to welcome them. Even seventeen-year-old Sam came home from college in Danville to meet his brother-in-law and young nephews.
The day of their arrival was cold and blustery, so when the train whistle sounded in the distance, they lined up inside the wide front hall rather than outside on the front porch—family in front and servants in the back, except for Nelson, who waited at the front door, ready to open it at the sound of the travelers’ approach.
When he opened it at last, bowing formally, a gust of wind seemed to sweep the Lincolns inside. Mary entered first, with eighteen-month-old Eddie in her arms. One glance at her elder half-sister and Emilie was awestruck by her loveliness. Mary’s clear, sparkling blue eyes took in the scene, and when she smiled, a fresh, faint wild rose color appeared in her smooth, fair cheeks. Her glossy chestnut brown hair was swept back from her lovely, smiling face, except where it fell in soft, short curls behind each ear.
A taller—much taller—dark-haired man with prominent cheekbones and depthless eyes followed Mary into the foyer carrying four-year-old Robert. The man crouched low to set the boy gently down, and when he rose and straightened and seemed to continue to stretch to ever greater heights, Emilie’s heart pounded and she almost could not breathe. All she could think of was the ravenous giant from the story of Jack and the Beanstalk—surely this stranger was that same giant, so tall was he and so big, with a long, full, black cloak over his shoulders and a fur cap with ear straps drawn around his head so that little of his face could be seen. Expecting any moment that he would bellow that he smelled the blood of a little Kentucky girl, Emilie shrank close to her mother, hiding behind her voluminous skirts and squeezing her eyes shut. But instead of a fearsome roar, she heard the voices of her family raised in warm greetings and merry laughter. Trembling, she slowly opened her eyes and peered around her mother’s skirts only to discover her loved ones exchanging handshakes and embraces not only with sister Mary and the children but with the fearsome giant as well.
When he had greeted everyone else, the man turned, crouched on one knee before Emilie, and smiled, looking at her with eyes so warm, kind, and gentle that in an instant she forgot that she had ever feared him. When he held out his arms, she obligingly let him lift her high, high in the air as he stood, so that if she had not been clutching him tightly, she might have reached up and brushed the crown molding with her fingertips.
“So this is Little Sister,” he said, amusement adding an undercurrent of laughter to his mellow tenor voice.
After that, he always called her Little Sister, and soon Mary too adopted the nickname. Emilie had never feared him again, not even when he rose to become the most powerful man in the land and held the power of life and death over those she loved most. He called her Little Sister even after her husband refused his offer of a commission in the Union Army and joined the Confederates instead. And she would never forget how he and Mary both had welcomed their Little Sister to the White House in those terrible weeks of anguish after Ben died.
Would Mary fondly call her Little Sister still, if Emilie reached out to her? Was Mary in any state to speak to her or read a heartfelt letter and respond in kind?
At thirty-eight years old, the last twelve lived as a widow, Emilie would have thought herself capable of bearing the news of Mary’s misfortune with more womanly stoicism and grace, but the latest revelations in the press had unsettled her deeply. Earlier that morning, after seeing her own three children well started on the day but before her first pupil arrived, Emilie had pored over Robert’s recent letters, searching for euphemisms and deflections, anything that would explain the discrepancy between what she had believed about Mary’s condition, and about Bellevue Place, and what her circumstances actually were, according to a certain Mrs. M. L. Rayne, correspondent for the Chicago Post and Mail. How a reporter, a stranger, had been allowed to see Mary when Dr. Patterson strongly advised friends and family not to visit out of concern that seeing them might agitate the patient and delay her recovery, Emilie could only wonder.
She would have traveled to Illinois to see Mary several times by now if she had known that visits were not harmful after all. She and Mary were estranged, but they were still family—and unique among all the Todd sisters, Emilie had distanced herself from Mary rather than the other way around.
How her choices tormented her now! She had always loved Mary, and Abe too, and indeed her quarrel had been with him, not with her sister. But after his assassination, when Mary had not responded to Emilie’s tentative letters of condolence, she had found herself at a loss, uncertain what to do. Should she persist, or should she wait patiently until her elder sister reached out to her? Eventually, preoccupied by her own grief and hardships, Emilie had stopped trying to find the right words to break the chilly silence that stretched between them.
Although she had severed ties with his mother, Emilie had kept in touch with Robert, her adored nephew and dear friend. As he was only seven years younger than herself, he had always felt more like a cousin than a nephew, and even when they had been on opposite sides of the war, their bonds of affection had not shattered. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for other members of their family: some remained irrevocably estranged a decade after the war ended, and others had left this earth, taking all hope of reconciliation with them.
But since she and Robert were close, Emilie trusted him—his judgment in correctly evaluating his mother’s condition, and his honesty in sharing his observations with her. Two weeks after the trial, he had written to assure her that his mother was receiving the best medical care and was as happily situated as possible, and that he was determined that she should have everything for her comfort and pleasure that could be safely provided. His mother resided in a private suite of two rooms with a bath, on the second floor in the same section of the building where the Patterson family’s quarters were located. Mary slept in the larger bedroom, while her personal attendant, a young former schoolteacher selected for her kindness and intelligence, occupied the smaller. Rumors that Mary was restrained by barred windows and locked doors were absolutely untrue: the windows were fitted with light, ornamental wire screens to prevent falls, and her door was locked only at night; during the day, she herself kept the key. As for her angry accusations at the trial, she was no longer furious at Robert for, as she had seen it then, his unfilial betrayal. “The expression of surprise at my action which was telegraphed in all the papers, and which you doubtless saw, was the first and last expression of the kind she has uttered and we are on the best of terms,” he wrote. “Indeed my consolation in this sad affair is knowing that she is happier in every way, in her freedom from worry and excitement, than she has been in ten years.”
Emilie knew that those ten years referred not to the end of the war but to the ill-fated day of his father’s murder. That day marked the crux of Mary’s life; thenceforth, everything belonged either to the hopeful Before or the wretched After.
In letters that followed, Robert informed Emilie that he visited his mother every week, often bringing along his five-year-old daughter Mamie. Without exception, Mary was delighted to see her grandchild, and in every regard she was cordial and welcoming to her son. Or so Robert’s letters reported well into June. Then—and here Emilie detected a pattern of troubling changes she had not noticed before—Mary went out walking less frequently and canceled nearly as many carriage rides as she scheduled, until apparently she was rarely leaving the building. “Today Mother was not quite so friendly in her manner to me as in previous visits,” Robert had written on June 17, and a week later, he had passed on a remark from her personal attendant that Mary had been sleeping restlessly of late.
The signs were subtle, but when Emilie purposefully searched Robert’s letters for them, they leapt off the page. Although Mary had appeared to be settling in well at Bellevue Place when she had first been committed, over the past few weeks she had become restless and aggrieved.
That altered disposition was likely what had informed the account Mrs. Rayne presented to the Post and Mail. The reporter met first with Dr. Patterson, who had been reluctant to discuss his patient’s condition, but either he had overcome his reticence or Mrs. Rayne had later found an orderly more willing to talk. Mrs. Lincoln gave the staff little trouble, but she was capricious in her walking and riding, scheduling a carriage ride for midday, then postponing it until the afternoon, and then until after supper, and then canceling it altogether, only to start over again the next morning. She had brought ten large trunks of clothing with her, but despite that abundance, she had ordered elaborate morning dresses of black French cambric and white striped lawn, which she never wore; soon thereafter, when she requested samples of black alpaca to have a suit made, she “was diverted from this, as it was only a form of her malady to accumulate material.” More distressing yet, Emilie read that often Mary would sit alone in her room and imagine herself at the White House entertaining senators and ambassadors with her beloved husband at her side. On other occasions, she would sit at her table and converse with her deceased sons—a symptom of her illness, Robert assured Emilie, and not to be confused with a sudden escalation in her belief in Spiritualism.
Ordinarily Mrs. Lincoln refused to see any visitors, “even declining to leave her room when they are in the house or on the grounds,” so Mrs. Rayne had been pleasantly surprised when her request to meet was accepted. A doctor escorted her up to Mrs. Lincoln’s suite, where the former first lady welcomed her cordially, shook her hand, and invited her to sit. She was dressed in an ordinary black dress, half worn; her glossy chestnut brown hair had gone mostly gray and was carelessly arranged in a coronet braid coiled into a knot in back. “She looked worn and ill,” Mrs. Rayne wrote, “and her hands, ringless and uncared for, were never at rest. I could plainly see in her lusterless eyes and in the forced composure of her manner evidences of a shattered mind. She was perfectly ladylike in manner, but rambling and diffuse in her conversation.” Even so, she spoke tenderly of her late husband, and upon learning that her visitor was from Chicago, she inquired politely about several friends residing in the city.
In parting, Mrs. Lincoln took a lovely bouquet from a crystal vase on her table and asked the reporter to accept it. “I thought I could perceive in the diplomatic bow and smile a return of the old society manner,” Mrs. Rayne wrote, “and my heart was full for the woman who sat down silent and alone in her solitary room to keep imaginary company with Senators and Ambassadors in the light of that gracious, kindly smile long since hidden beneath the coffin lid.” No encouragement was held out that Mrs. Lincoln would ever become permanently well, the sympathetic reporter concluded, but there was no better asylum than Bellevue Place for the attempt to restore her reason to be undertaken.
Emilie had been shaken by the article, which left her bewildered and worried. The distracted, pathetic, delusional woman portrayed in its columns bore no resemblance to the confident, clever, gracious elder sister she had admired since childhood. Nor did that unhappy woman resemble the unwell but cooperative and steadily improving mother Robert had described with tender frankness in his letters.
Had this Mrs. Rayne observed the real Mary Lincoln? Had Mary allowed a stranger a glimpse behind the brave mask she maintained for those who loved her most faithfully? But no, that wasn’t Mary either. Her sisters and closest friends had seen her at her best and at her worst, when she had shone radiantly as the first lady of the land and when she had lain prostrate in bed, keening with grief. She would not conceal her true self from them now. Even her suicide attempt—Emilie’s heart thudded at the thought of it—had been made in plain view of dozens of witnesses.
Who was this reporter who had either observed a Mary none of her sisters knew or fabricated a pitiful tale for unfathomable reasons of her own? What was true, and what was falsehood? Were greedy opportunists manipulating Mary for their own gain, or was Mary somehow orchestrating it all, whether to secure her release or win public sympathy or something else entirely?
One matter was certain: Mary needed her loved ones to put past grievances aside, to help her make her way through this dreadful chapter of her life and find the path to a more hopeful future. The Todd sisters all had survived tragedy. They all had endured loss—parents, husbands, children, whole nations and noble causes, all had fallen away, lost to time. If they could not rise above their old resentments to help a sister in need, would it not be said that they had learned nothing from their own suffering?
Emilie was neither a philosopher nor a physician, just a music teacher, a widow, a sister, a mother. She could not claim any particular knowledge of the diseases of the human mind, but she did know how the accumulation of sorrows could burden the spirit.
She also knew that she could not help Mary from the other side of an unbroken silence.