Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

Elizabeth understood.

  The Davises’ course was fixed, irrevocable. It was only a matter of time.

  Elizabeth finished the wrappers a few days before the Davis family left Washington. When she presented the finished garments to Mrs. Davis, she admired them, set them aside, and handed Elizabeth a bundle of fine needlework, a difficult work-in-progress of her own that she wanted Elizabeth to finish. “You can send it to me by post when it is done,” she instructed, and then she paused to offer Elizabeth a hopeful smile. “Or perhaps you can call on me in the parlor of my new home and hand it to me yourself. Perhaps you won’t have to walk very far. I’m sure that wherever we settle, we can arrange a room in our residence for you.”

  Elizabeth could delay no longer. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Davis. I’m happy to finish your sewing, but I’ll have to send it to you. I’ve decided to stay in Washington.”

  Mrs. Davis pressed her lips together and nodded as if she had expected Elizabeth to refuse, and yet she could not quite give up her cause for lost. “Aren’t you tempted, even a little, by the prospect of being a First Lady’s personal modiste?”

  Elizabeth laughed shakily. “I am indeed, but not enough to leave my home. I promise, ma’am, if you return to Washington, I’d be pleased to sew for you again. More than pleased—I would be delighted.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth.” Mrs. Davis regarded her with sad affection. “You betray yourself. You said if I return, not when.”

  On the twenty-first of January, Jefferson Davis and several other Southern senators resigned their seats and left Washington, casting their lots with their home states. Later Elizabeth would read in the papers that Mr. Davis had expressed love for the Union and a desire for peace, but he had also asserted his right to own slaves and the right of states to secede. “I am sure I feel no hostility to you, senators from the North,” he had told the assembly. “I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you well.”

  Soon thereafter, Mrs. Davis left Washington with her husband and children and slaves. The Southern states elected Jefferson Davis as their president, and Varina Davis became First Lady of the Confederacy.

  Chapter Two

  FEBRUARY–MARCH 1861

  All of Washington City was abuzz with anticipation—and in certain quarters, apprehension—for the arrival of President-Elect Lincoln. He and his family were approaching the capital by a circuitous train route, both to greet as many supporters along the way as he could and to thwart anyone who might attempt to do him harm. “He hasn’t even taken office yet and those secessionists are already threatening his life,” said Walker Lewis one morning, offering Elizabeth his newspaper, which disgusted him too much for him to continue reading. “They won’t bother to wait and see what he might do in office. They hate him on principle.”

  The ongoing, escalating conflict over Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor also dominated conversation. Ever since December 26, when United States major Robert Anderson had moved his command from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island to the stronger, more defensible fortifications controlling the harbor, the handful of federal troops there had been essentially under siege. In early January, on the same day Mississippi seceded from the Union, South Carolinian forces had fired upon the Star of the West, an unarmed merchant ship President Buchanan had sent to resupply and reinforce Major Anderson and his men. The ship had been forced to turn back, and reports from Fort Sumter had become increasingly dire as the men ran low on food, arms, and supplies. Although many Republicans called for an immediate military response, President Buchanan seemed inclined to wait out the last few remaining weeks of his presidency and let Abraham Lincoln worry about it when he took over.

  A few officers’ wives had been living on Sullivan’s Island with their husbands, but when Major Anderson moved his troops from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, the ladies had been sent over to Charleston for their safety. There they found every door closed to them. Not a single boardinghouse would offer them lodgings, and one landlady bluntly declared that if she offered the officers’ wives a safe haven, she would lose all her other boarders. Discouraged and angry, the women had been obliged to leave their husbands to their defense of Fort Sumter and seek refuge in the North. When they arrived in Washington, bitter and defiant, they found themselves warmly welcomed by the Republicans and celebrated as the first martyrs of the war.

  “I cannot imagine such a state of feeling,” one of Elizabeth’s patrons declared as Elizabeth dressed her for a levee at the White House one evening. Margaret Sumner McLean was the daughter of the Massachusetts-born Major General Edwin Vose Sumner and the wife of Captain Eugene McLean, a Maryland native with unabashed Southern sympathies. Her father’s cousin was the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, who had been savagely caned and nearly murdered on the Senate floor almost five years earlier by a colleague from South Carolina who had taken great offense to one of his antislavery speeches, which was not surprising considering that it had been full of personal insults. To say that Mrs. McLean’s loyalties were probably divided in those troubled times was, in Elizabeth’s opinion, a grave understatement. “To turn away helpless women, to leave them homeless and unprotected! I am quite indignant with so-called Southern chivalry.”

  “I hear a few Southern gentlemen offered the ladies rooms in their own homes,” said Elizabeth, adjusting the fall of lace around Mrs. McLean’s shoulders. “The ladies declined.”

  Mrs. McLean laughed in brusque dismissal. “They had no choice, and the gentlemen of Charleston must have known that. How could officers’ wives accept the hospitality of men who had openly avowed enmity toward their husbands? I can imagine the turn the negotiations would have taken: ‘Ho, there, Major Anderson! Still determined to hold Fort Sumter, are you? Did I mention that we have your men’s wives?’”

  “You think those Charleston men would have harmed the ladies?”

  “Oh, probably not. They were gentlemen, not common ruffians. But even if their safety had been guaranteed and notarized, the ladies couldn’t put their brave husbands under any obligation to their enemies. Nor should it have been necessary. Where were the kindly widows of Charleston, the dutiful landlords? How would they feel if their women were treated so contemptuously in Washington or New York?”

  “I imagine they would not think well of it.”

  “No, indeed. They would consider it an act of war.” Her gown and hair in order, Mrs. McLean dismissed Elizabeth with her thanks and a promise to send along Elizabeth’s good wishes in her next letter to Varina Davis, a dear friend whom she missed terribly. Washington society wasn’t the same without her, and the excitement of new acquaintances was a poor substitute for the company of longtime, loyal friends.

  Elizabeth didn’t see Mrs. McLean again until nearly two weeks later, when she unexpectedly called at the Lewis boardinghouse. Elizabeth was hard at work sewing in her rooms when she heard footsteps and the rustle of hoop skirts in the hallway. Glancing up from her work, she was astonished to discover Mrs. McLean standing there, regarding her imperiously over a muslin-wrapped bundle tied with twine. Elizabeth’s heart sank, but she kept her face pleasantly expressionless. She did not like it when her patrons came to her rooms, especially without any notice whatsoever. It was more appropriate to their status—and more protective of her privacy—if she went to them.

  “Elizabeth, I am invited to dine at Willard’s next Sunday,” Mrs. McLean declared by way of a greeting. “I positively have not a dress fit to wear on the occasion. I have just purchased material, and you must commence work on it right away.”

  Elizabeth did not allow even the smallest sigh of exasperation to escape her lips. “I have more work promised now than I can do,” she replied evenly. “It is impossible for me to make a dress for you to wear on Sunday next.”

  “Pshaw! Nothing is impossible.” Mrs. McLean swept the room with her gaze as if to confirm that no other lady stood waiting to a
ssert her claim upon Elizabeth’s time. “I must have the dress made by Sunday.”

  “I am sorry—”

  “Now, don’t say no again. I tell you that you must make the dress.” Mrs. McLean raised a hand to forestall Elizabeth’s objections. “I have often heard you say that you would like to work for the ladies of the White House. Well, I have it in my power to obtain you this privilege. I know Mrs. Lincoln well, and you shall make a dress for her provided you finish mine in time to wear at dinner on Sunday.”

  For a moment, Elizabeth wondered how a Massachusetts-born wife of a Southern-sympathizing Marylander could have any acquaintance at all with the new First Lady, late of Illinois and not yet arrived in Washington. Then she remembered that Mrs. McLean’s father was one of the cavalry officers who had volunteered to accompany the Lincolns from Springfield to the capital city. Perhaps the families were old friends from Mr. Lincoln’s term in Congress years before. Perhaps Mrs. McLean could indeed bring about what she promised.

  Elizabeth needed no further inducement. “Very well,” she said, setting aside the dress she had been embroidering for another client, a kind, sweet-faced, grandmotherly woman who would never dream of complaining if Elizabeth finished her gown a day or two later than expected. Elizabeth felt a pang of guilt over the injustice, but she could not let such a rare and promising opportunity slip from her grasp. She resolved to make it up to her other patron somehow—but not before next Sunday.

  Elizabeth persuaded Mrs. McLean to let her begin fitting the lining that very moment by assuring her that it was the only way she had any chance at all of finishing the dress in time. They met the next day at Mrs. McLean’s residence across the street from Willard’s Hotel, and the next, and then Elizabeth had enough completed so that she could work on her own. But she was not entirely on her own; in order to meet the deadline, she hired two young ladies to assist her, skilled if inexperienced seamstresses she had hired for small tasks before. Even with their help, Elizabeth was obliged to work all day long and late into the night, barely pausing to eat and sleep and work the knots out of her neck, back, and fingers.

  It took a small miracle, but somehow, after much worry and trouble, Elizabeth completed the dress by midmorning on the day of the dinner. She hurried to the McLean residence as soon as the last stitch was put into the hem; had her patron try it on; made a few last-minute, minuscule adjustments that likely no one else but another skilled mantua maker would notice; and then—at last and just in time—the dress was finished.

  “Elizabeth, you are a marvel,” Mrs. McLean declared, admiring herself in the full-length mirror. She had a lovely figure and the bodice fit as tightly as wallpaper, and the ashes of rose silk lent a warm elegance to her alabaster skin. “One glimpse of this dress is all the recommendation to Mrs. Lincoln you will need.”

  “All the same,” said Elizabeth, “I would be grateful if you would put in a good word for me too.”

  Mrs. McLean turned and peered over her shoulder at her own reflection, smiling with satisfaction at the snug lines of the bodice and the graceful drape of the flounce. “I’m tempted to keep you my little secret.” She glimpsed Elizabeth’s expression in the mirror and quickly added, “I’m only teasing. Of course I’ll mention your name to the First Lady. You kept your part of our bargain and I’ll keep mine.”

  Elizabeth murmured her thanks and hid her disappointment. Apparently she and Mrs. McLean remembered their arrangement quite differently. She had not toiled so long and so hard and with so little sleep for the mere mention of her name to the First Lady. “You shall make a dress for her” had been her patron’s exact words. She had made it sound so certain. Now Elizabeth wondered if it had ever been within Mrs. McLean’s power to grant her fondest wish.

  Elizabeth cherished each precious letter George sent from Wilberforce University. She savored every word of his descriptions of his studies, his new friends, their merry antics, and his long hours bent over books in the library. He asked her as many questions about Washington as he answered about himself, eager for news of the election, the transition of power, and the famous personages she encountered. “Your observations make me the envy of my classmates,” he told her. “They have to learn what little they can from the papers, while I receive your firsthand, eloquent dispatches at regular and frequent intervals. The fellows come to me with their questions about what is really going on in the capital (don’t worry, Mother, I never pass on gossip about your patron ladies) and I am happy to oblige. I will never share the fine shirts you sew for me, Mother, but I am less selfish when it comes to the news.”

  George’s gentle teasing made her smile, as did his generous praise. Her lack of formal schooling had always troubled her, although she knew she was fortunate to be literate at all. It was illegal for slaves to read and write, but none of Elizabeth’s former owners had forbidden their slaves to learn if they were bright enough to pick it up on their own or if another slave taught them on their own time. Elizabeth did not think she was a very good writer, so she could not help but be flattered and charmed when her darling son called her eloquent.

  She was laughing over George’s comic description of a recent snowball fight on the college’s main quadrangle when a knock sounded on her door. It was an unexpectedly mild Sunday, a welcome glimpse of spring in early March, and she and Virginia had made plans to go walking later to watch the preparations for the next day’s inauguration. Elizabeth hastened to the door, expecting her friend, but instead a young messenger stood outside in the hallway, a colored boy of about fourteen years, breathless from haste and clutching a letter. “I’m supposed to wait for a reply, ma’am,” he said, panting.

  Curious, Elizabeth unfolded the letter, skimmed the first line—and uttered a sound that fell somewhere between a groan and a laugh. “My dear Elizabeth,” Mrs. McLean had written. “Do be so kind as to call on me at my home today at four o’clock P.M. With my best regards, etc., Mrs. Eugene McLean.”

  Shaking her head, Elizabeth read the brief letter again, as if she could make more words appear by sheer force of will. “Did she say anything else?” she asked the young messenger. “Why she wants me to come, perhaps?” And on such short notice, she almost added, but thought better of it.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head. “Just that I should bring this to Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley at the Lewis boardinghouse on Twelfth Street.”

  “Well, you’ve done as you were told.” She folded the letter, slipped it into her pocket, and offered the messenger a coin. “Please return to Mrs. McLean and tell her that I thank her for her note, and I will call on her tomorrow morning at my earliest convenience.”

  He nodded and hurried off, and Elizabeth closed the door behind him. Sunday was supposed to be her day off, as her patrons ought to have known. She was a free woman, free to ignore unreasonable demands. Monday morning would be soon enough for whatever Mrs. McLean wanted, and if not, she could hire another modiste—although Elizabeth did not think it vain to doubt that her patron would find anyone as skilled and accommodating as herself.

  The morning of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration dawned raw and overcast, the busy streets clouded with dust stirred up by a thin, intermittent wind. It was not yet nine o’clock when Elizabeth left her boardinghouse and joined the throngs of people already out and about, buzzing with anticipation for the day’s events. She saw not one familiar face among the thousands as she walked the few blocks to Mrs. McLean’s house. Along the way she spotted evidence of out-of-town visitors who had been unable to find room in the city’s packed hotels and had instead spent the night on the streets—a makeshift bed on a pile of lumber, a line of people waiting to wash up at a public pump. An excited crowd was milling about Willard’s Hotel when Elizabeth arrived, and she struggled to work her way through it to the McLeans’ residence on the opposite side of the street. Breathless, she knocked loudly upon the front door, uncertain whether she would be heard at all, but before long the doorman answered. When she gave her name and explaine
d her errand, she was told that Mrs. McLean was not at home. Just as she was wondering whether she should wait there or try to return home, one of Colonel McLean’s aides appeared and told her she was wanted at Willard’s.

  Perplexed, Elizabeth again braved the throng, crossed the street, and somehow managed to push her way into the hotel through the crowded entrance. “There you are,” someone exclaimed, and a hand seized her shoulder and whirled her about. It was Mrs. McLean, her gaze sharp and incredulous. “Why did you not come yesterday, as I requested?”

  “Your note didn’t say that it was urgent,” Elizabeth reminded her.

  “On the eve of the inauguration, how could it be otherwise?” Mrs. McLean’s mouth thinned in disapproval. “Mrs. Lincoln wanted to see you, but I fear that now you are too late.”

  “Mrs. Lincoln wanted to see me?”

  Mrs. McLean nodded impatiently. “A week ago, someone spilled coffee on the gown Mrs. Lincoln intended to wear today. She needed a dressmaker, so I recommended you. Lo and behold, she recognized your name. Apparently you’ve worked for some of her lady friends in St. Louis, not that it matters now.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. McLean,” said Elizabeth, her heart sinking. If Mrs. Lincoln had requested a dressmaker, why on earth had Mrs. McLean waited a week to summon her? “You did not say what you wanted with me yesterday, so I judged that this morning would do as well.”

  “You should have come yesterday,” Mrs. McLean scolded, but then she relented, if only a trifle. “Go on up to Mrs. Lincoln’s room. She may find use for you yet.”

  As soon as Mrs. McLean gave her the number of the suite, Elizabeth hurried off to find parlor number six. When she knocked upon the door, a cheerful voice invited her to enter, and when she stepped into the room, she found herself face-to-face with a dark-haired woman just over forty, inclined to stoutness but with a lovely complexion and clear blue eyes that boasted a quick, keen gaze. All about her were well-dressed ladies helping her prepare for the inauguration.