She would stay in cities where she already had friends, Mary explained, and their company would mitigate any sorrow she might feel when reminded of loved ones she had lost. Faithful Lewis had already agreed to accompany her on the train from Lexington to Philadelphia and on to New York, where on the first day of October she would board the steamer Labrador and set sail for Le Havre, from whence she would travel by steamer to Bordeaux, then by rail to Pau, a health resort in the French Pyrenees. She insisted that her sisters keep her travel plans secret so that Robert could not prevent her from going, for she feared he might return her to Bellevue if that was what was required to detain her. No amount of argument would convince Mary that Robert had absolutely no intention of committing her to an asylum ever again, so they kept her secret, though not without misgivings.
“I go as an exile, and alone,” Mary declared as she left the Edwards residence and climbed aboard the carriage to the train station, with Lewis as her solicitous escort.
Frances and Ann had come to see her off, and as the three sisters watched the carriage disappear around the corner, Elizabeth said, “She will soon grow weary of isolation in a foreign land, and she will come home.”
Ann nodded knowingly, but Frances, heartsick, thought it was far more likely that they would never see her again.
26
May 20, 1875
Mary
She was not insane. This Mary knew with all her heart and soul and being.
She was distressed and despondent, yes, but what rational woman would not be in her circumstances? Bereft of her great love and her three cherished sons, abandoned by her sisters, betrayed by her dearest friend, scorned by the world, ridiculed by those who had once respected her, and now hauled into court by her only surviving child and denounced as mad—
What woman of sound mind would not succumb to despair? Who would not see all too clearly that she had no reason to go on?
She could not be confined to an asylum. There, among the morbidly insane, she truly would go mad. She had lost almost everything else, but she had clung fiercely to her reason, her understanding. She would not submit to having those stripped away from her too.
Robert had come by her hotel suite that morning on his way to work—to see how she was doing after the previous day’s ordeal, he claimed, but in truth, to gloat, to take grim pleasure in her misery. Upon his departure, he had warned her that he would return later with Mr. Swett to escort her to Bellevue Place.
Her son and his lawyer might very well try, but she intended to be gone by then.
They had placed three guards on her: a stern-faced woman who stayed inside her hotel room and two men, at least one of whom she suspected was a Pinkerton, stationed outside her door. She had overheard Robert instruct them not to let her leave the hotel under any pretense, but also not to physically restrain her in any way. She could have laughed at how Robert had tied their hands. How did he expect the guards to hold her there if she wished to depart—by the power of persuasive speech? No, he assumed she would confine herself there, cowering in her room. Robert believed her to be humbled, intimidated, too fearful to disobey him, and too mad to plan an escape. He would learn how very wrong he was, in this and other matters.
The lady guard had been placed in Mary’s room to prevent her from jumping out the window or otherwise harming herself, so when Mary picked up her reticule and announced that she must see the concierge to arrange to send an urgent telegram to her sister, the matron merely frowned, nodded, and adjusted her stance. Heart pounding, Mary stepped into the corridor and told the two men the same story. They too frowned and studied her, but when she turned to go, they made no move to stop her. She quickened her pace, muffling a laugh of delight when she made it to the stairwell without being accosted. Swiftly she descended, pausing once at a landing, certain she heard footsteps a flight above as if someone were in pursuit. The sounds stopped when she did, so after a moment’s fearful hesitation, she hurried on her way.
Of course she did not stop to speak to the concierge; she had to make haste, and there was no need to carry her ruse that far. She had passed the Squair & Company drugstore in the lobby many times since she had checked into the Grand Pacific Hotel a month before, and she had stopped in occasionally, so this visit would not strike the pharmacist as unusual. Stepping up to the counter, she forced a smile to hide the tremor in her voice and ordered a three-ounce bottle of laudanum and camphor—to apply to her shoulder for neuralgic pain, she added, when Mr. Squair momentarily hesitated.
“I shall need a half-hour to prepare the concoction, madam,” he said. “Shall I send the bellboy up to your room with it when it is ready?”
Mary fought back the urge to chide him for the delay. “No, no thank you. I have other errands. I shall return for it.”
Quickly she turned and left the drugstore. Crossing the lobby, she paused to glance over her shoulder as she reached the front entrance, a prickling on the back of her neck warning that she was being watched. She hastened outside, hailed a cab, and rode one block to the Rogers & Smith drugstore on the corner of Adams and Clark Streets. Instructing the driver to wait, she entered the shop, joined the queue, and waited impatiently while the pharmacist served two other customers. To her consternation, when it was finally her turn, a clerk summoned Mr. Smith into a backroom before she had a chance to place her order. The pharmacist promptly returned, frowning oddly, and when she asked for the laudanum and camphor, he apologized and explained that they were out.
“Of which compound?” she asked, suspicious.
“Camphor,” he replied, too quickly.
“I see,” she snapped, and wheeled around only to nearly collide with one of her guards. For a moment, she froze in shock, but she quickly recovered her composure. What did it matter? It was all nearly over anyway. “I need to purchase a few essentials before my travels later today,” she informed him imperiously. “Please do excuse me.”
Knowing he would not lay hands on her, she quickly sidestepped him and hurried from the store and into her cab. “Dale Pharmacy,” she instructed the driver, “two blocks down Clark Street.”
Minutes later, she entered the drugstore only to find three bemused customers waiting at the counter but no druggist in sight. Edging around an aisle of shelves, she glanced through the open doorway into the back office only to stop short, her heart in her throat, upon discovering Mr. Dale conversing solemnly with Mr. Squair, their brows furrowed, their voices low.
Panicked, she drew back, but as she inched toward the door she realized that if Mr. Squair was here, he would not be at his own shop. Hurrying back to her cab, she urged the driver to return at once to Squair & Company.
Her pulse racing, she fought to maintain an appearance of calm when she entered the shop for the second time that morning and politely inquired of the young, bespectacled assistant druggist whether her order was complete. “Only a few minutes more, madam,” he promised, raising a finger and darting into the backroom. He promptly returned, rang up the purchase, and handed her a small, brown bottle labeled Laudanum & Camphor. She felt a surge of triumph, but quickly concealed it, thanked him, and left the store.
As soon as she reached the sidewalk, she uncorked the bottle and drank the entire concoction down, shaking it upside down above her mouth to get every last drop. Immediately a wave of relief swept over her, cooled by only the faintest undertow of regret.
She returned to her hotel room, nodding in passing to the lone guard posted outside her door and the matron standing by the window. She lay down on her bed, fully clothed, to await the end.
She expected to drift off peacefully into a dreamless sleep from which she would never wake, but five minutes passed, and then ten, and she felt no different, except that her pulse had steadied as the nervous excitement of her mission subsided. As the seconds ticked by, her heart began to pound once again, and she felt tears gathering. Could she not succeed even in this?
The assistant druggist, probably a novice, must have worked up
a diluted solution. Fuming, she rose from the bed, took her reticule in hand, again talked her way past the full complement of guards, and returned to Squair & Company. The pharmacist had resumed his post, and his eyes betrayed a flicker of wariness when she sternly informed him that his assistant’s concoction had done absolutely nothing to ease her shoulder pain. She ordered a replacement bottle, declaring, “I shall come behind the counter to observe you as you mix the compounds, just to be sure it is done properly this time.”
“I apologize for the error earlier today, madam,” said Mr. Squair. “However, the laudanum is kept in the cellar. The stairs are dark and steep, and customers are absolutely forbidden to go down there.”
“Very well,” snapped Mary. “Just please, be quick about your business.”
She paced near the window as she waited, ignoring the curious glances of other customers, until Mr. Squair returned with a new bottle, labeled Laudanum Poison.
“Be very careful with it,” he advised. “It is highly potent.”
She thanked him curtly, quit the store, and, on reaching the hotel lobby, swiftly uncorked the bottle and drank down every drop of it. She closed her eyes, sighed, and clasped the fist holding the empty bottle to her bosom. Now it was done.
She opened her eyes, and her heart plummeted.
Robert was approaching her from across the lobby, flanked by her two male guards. Her son’s face was stricken and pale, and just as she was wondering why he had come hours earlier than expected, she saw Mr. Squair around the corner, arms folded over his chest, chin lowered and mouth set in determination, and she knew that these men, all these men, had conspired with her son against her, and there was no hope now of going to sleep and waking in Abe’s arms, not with these men empowered to determine her fate.
She had delivered herself into their hands, but they could not hold her forever. She would not submit. She had powerful friends, and Abe was watching over her. They would see. She was Mrs. President, and she would not submit.
27
July 1882
Elizabeth
On July 15, 1882, the eleventh anniversary of Tad Lincoln’s death, Elizabeth fought back tears as she telegraphed Robert in Chicago: “Your mother collapsed of a stroke. Insensible and failing. Come at once if possible to bid farewell.”
Next she sent similar telegrams to Emilie in Lexington and Margaret in Cincinnati, knowing they would want to be notified even though they could never reach Springfield in time to say good-bye.
Then she hesitated, debating whether to telegraph their brother George in South Carolina. Even amid a family that included numerous former rebels, George was notorious, estranged even from his siblings who had supported the South. Elizabeth had exchanged a few letters with him after he had signed up as a surgeon with the Confederate Army, but she had broken off contact entirely after it became widely known that he treated Union prisoners of war, especially colored troops, with shocking brutality, violating his Hippocratic Oath and all the rules of human decency. During the war, he had also publicly declared that his brother-in-law Abraham Lincoln was “one of the greatest scoundrels unhung.” Mary had never forgiven him for it, nor had he sought forgiveness. It would be a betrayal even to invite him, though it made no difference now to Mary, who was not conscious enough to realize an invitation had been considered. So Elizabeth sent no telegram to George. He would not have come anyway, and he would learn of Mary’s death from the papers all too soon.
Did she have days left, or merely hours? The doctors could not say with any certainty.
Frances, Ann, and Lewis had been keeping vigil by Mary’s bedside ever since they realized that she was not likely to rise from her sickbed. In that time, several of Mary’s other grandnephews and grandnieces had passed in and out of the Edwards residence, looking in on their great-aunt Mary. They prayed silently with heads bowed in the parlor and helped the Todd sisters however they could.
So few of their siblings remained to mourn Mary’s passing. Sam and Aleck had been killed in action during the war, and in 1871 David had at long last succumbed to the injuries he received at Vicksburg. Levi had died of liver failure in 1864, decades of heavy drinking having finally exacted their inexorable toll. Martha had perished of a brief illness in 1868 when she was but thirty-five years old, and Kitty, the youngest of them all, had died of heart disease when she was only thirty-four. Most recently, Elodie had died in childbirth in 1877. At sixty-three, Mary had long outlived them, and yet to Elizabeth, five years older, Mary’s imminent passing still seemed to have come much too soon.
Before death had parted them forever, war and time and circumstance had scattered the sisters and brothers far from their Lexington birthplace. None had traveled farther than Mary.
On her last trip abroad, Mary had not wandered about Europe as widely as before, but had mostly remained in the resort town of Pau, making occasional sojourns to other cities in France and Italy. Her letters home had been quite cheerful and optimistic; she was either received anonymously, which relieved and relaxed her, or treated like honored aristocracy, which delighted her beyond measure. She occasionally complained of various ailments—fatigue, neuralgia, chest colds, aches and soreness—and also rather suddenly lost a significant amount of weight, which she considered a cause for celebration rather than concern.
After the first year, however, the tone of her letters turned melancholic. She dwelt upon her past losses as much as the impressive views of Herculaneum, the Bay of Naples, and Mount Vesuvius. By October 1879, she had begun to express a deep longing to return to America, referring to herself as an oppressed, heartbroken woman and her long absence from her homeland as an exile. All that kept her from returning, she confided to Elizabeth, was her profound terror that Robert would seek to have her committed the moment she set foot on American soil.
“That is preposterous,” Robert protested when Elizabeth told him of his mother’s fears. “Please assure her that under no possible circumstances would I do so. I have no reason to think that such interference is now or will hereafter be proper. Even if it were, I would do nothing. If I could have foreseen what a torment this entire experience would be for me, nothing would have induced me to go through with it. The ordinary troubles and distresses of life are enough without that.”
Elizabeth passed on Robert’s assurances—in her own, more encouraging words—but Mary demurred. Nevertheless, she had begun sending Robert’s daughter occasional presents from France and Italy, and Elizabeth decided to interpret this as a faint glimmer of hope, however improbable, that Mary might one day reconcile with her son.
In December 1879, Mary seriously injured her spine after falling from a stepladder while trying to hang a painting. Her physicians set her in plasters, but even after they were removed, she suffered intense pain and weakness along her left side and found it difficult to walk. Six months later, the lingering debilitation caused her to trip and fall down a flight of stairs, worsening the damage to her back so that certain movements inflicted excruciating pain.
Mary was too unwell to live alone any longer, so despite her anxiety over Robert’s intentions, she had to return to America.
In October 1880, she sailed from Le Havre to New York aboard the steamer L’Amerique. Lewis met her at the dock, but she felt too ill to continue on, so he checked them into a suite at the Clarendon Hotel. There she was examined by Dr. Louis A. Sayre, a world-renowned orthopedic physician and a childhood friend, who diagnosed her condition as an inflammation of the spine, disorder of the kidneys, and a “great mental depression,” requiring proper medical treatment and “the sympathy of family and friends.”
When Elizabeth read Lewis’s telegram, the doctor’s recommendation struck her as a stinging rebuke. If sympathy could have cured Mary of her mental afflictions, she would have been well long ago, but sympathy and love had never been enough. For many years and possibly still, Mary had required the thoughtful attention of a skilled physician specially trained in diseases of the mind. That was preci
sely the kind of care she had had from Dr. Patterson at Bellevue Place, where she had greatly improved. If not for the Bradwells and their misguided mission to rescue her from mortal embarrassment, Mary would have remained in the asylum until she was fully restored to reason, rather than thrust back out into the world before she was ready and subjected to new injuries before the old wounds had scarred over.
When Mary became well enough to travel, Lewis escorted her on the train from New York to Springfield, where Elizabeth and her granddaughter Mary Edwards helped her settle into her old room. Elizabeth hid her dismay at her sister’s debilitated condition, her pain, her limited mobility, her depressed spirits, and her failing eyesight. How had Mary managed so long on her own, so far away across the sea?
As the weeks passed, Elizabeth, Ninian, and Lewis discovered that although Mary usually seemed perfectly rational and pleasant, she still suffered from troubling manias and delusions. She insisted upon sleeping on one side of the bed in order to leave her husband’s side undisturbed for him, and sometimes she alarmed companions by giving a sudden start and asking if they too had just heard his voice. She kept sixty-four trunks of clothing in the Edwards residence, and she would spend hours each day opening, unpacking, sorting, and repacking them, grimacing in pain as she bent and knelt in her work, yet doggedly persisting, driven by some compulsion that Elizabeth could not understand.
And yet there were bright moments, glimmers of the woman Mary might have been had she not been tormented by loss and abandonment ever since their mother’s death and their stepmother’s rejection so many years before. She adored Lewis, and she was amiable and merry and charming in his company. She was generous to Frances, who had suffered financial hardships since William’s death a few years after the war. Mary kindly gifted her hundreds of dollars for necessities and the payment of debts, refusing to consider it a loan; while still abroad, she had sent Frances hundreds of dollars’ worth of fine woolen goods to replace the faded, threadbare clothing she otherwise would have worn until the patches needed patches.
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