Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  The inauguration brought newcomers not only to Washington but also into the most intimate circles of the White House, for between the November election and the commencement of President Lincoln’s second term, several members of his cabinet resigned, and others were named to replace them. Iowa senator James F. Harlan assumed the post of secretary of the interior, a staffing change that seemed to please Robert Lincoln, who was—not as secretly as he seemed to believe—courting Mr. Harlan’s daughter, Mary. Elizabeth too was glad to see Mr. Harlan elevated to such an important post, because his wife, a kind, gracious woman, was one of her favorite patrons, and Elizabeth was very happy for her.

  On April 3, a Monday, Mrs. Harlan had come to Elizabeth’s reception room at the boardinghouse with material for a new dress, a lovely green-and-white striped silk. “I’m not certain about the color,” Mrs. Harlan mused as Elizabeth examined the fine fabric. “I fear it will make me appear sallow.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it shall.” Elizabeth beckoned Mrs. Harlan to step closer to the window, where she draped the fabric over Mrs. Harlan’s shoulder and bosom and stepped back to study the effect. “I think it’s very becoming to your complexion and it suits your hair and eyes well.”

  “Mr. Harlan likes me in green.” Mrs. Harlan had to raise her voice to be heard over a sudden clamor in the streets, a cacophony of passing artillery.

  “All the more reason to wear it often,” Elizabeth replied, nearly shouting as whistles and cheers joined the din.

  “What is going on out there?” Mrs. Harlan wondered aloud, peering out the window.

  “They must be on their way to fire off a salute. We’ve become quite accustomed to the show around here.” Then, frowning thoughtfully, she added, “I admit this does seem more exuberant than usual.”

  Mrs. Harlan’s eyebrows rose. “This must mean good news, then.”

  “It surely must.”

  A look of understanding passed between them, and together they hurried outside. “Excuse me, sir,” Elizabeth called to a man whistling cheerfully as he strode after the artillery. “What’s happened? What’s the news?”

  “What’s the news, you ask?” The man whooped and threw his hat into the air. “Richmond’s fallen, that’s the news!”

  As the man hurried off to retrieve his hat and rejoin the impromptu parade, Elizabeth gasped, Mrs. Harlan cried out, and then they joined hands and twirled about in a circle, laughing and cheering. “I must tell the girls,” Elizabeth exclaimed, and dropping Mrs. Harlan’s hands, she ran across the street to her workrooms. “Emma, girls,” she called out as she burst into the room where her assistant seamstresses sewed. “Richmond has fallen!”

  “We heard! We know!” Elated, Emma threw her arms around her, and only then did Elizabeth notice her young assistants were laughing and crying and embracing all around her. “Did you hear the best part? It was colored soldiers that took the city. Our soldiers!”

  Elizabeth’s spirits soared. Speechless with happiness, she clasped her hands to her heart and laughed aloud.

  “That’s not the best part,” another seamstress called out joyfully. “The best part is that you promised us a day off when Richmond fell.”

  Everyone burst out laughing, and Elizabeth joined in, helpless to do otherwise, until, catching her breath, she shook her head and waved them to silence. “I can’t send you all home,” she protested. “Mrs. Harlan is waiting across the way with silk for a new dress.”

  A chorus of dismay greeted her words. “Mrs. Harlan can’t want to stay and fit the lining for a dress now,” Emma protested. “Surely she wants to celebrate too.”

  When the other seamstresses chimed in, urging her to at least go and ask, Elizabeth wavered. “Don’t leave yet,” she said, but her irrepressible smile undercut whatever sternness she might otherwise have mustered. She dashed back across the street, where she found Mrs. Harlan in her reception room, gathering up the silk they had let fall to the floor in their excitement.

  “Mrs. Harlan,” Elizabeth exclaimed, hurrying to help. “I’m terribly sorry. I had to share the good news with my assistants, and as it happened they already knew, and they reminded me of a promise I had made them months ago, that when Richmond fell I would give them the day off, although I realize it’s terribly inconvenient—”

  “Not at all,” Mrs. Harlan assured her, smiling. “For such good tidings, I would gladly wait another day or two for my dress. You must keep your promise. Give your girls a holiday and a treat, by all means.”

  Elizabeth thanked her profusely and promised to begin fitting her lining the next day. Mrs. Harlan agreed, and as she departed for her home, Elizabeth put the green-and-white striped silk in a safe place, snatched up her bonnet, and hurried back to her workrooms. “More good news, girls,” she called out, but she didn’t need to say any more, because they had guessed that their long-promised holiday had come at last. They implored Elizabeth to join them, and this time she agreed. Arm in arm, they joined the celebration already spilling over into the streets, their hearts overflowing with joy, their happiness reflected in the faces of the people they passed, clerks and shopkeepers and housemaids and waiters whose businesses had also declared a holiday. Residents draped patriotic banners and bunting from their windows, and bands quickly formed up on street corners and in parks to play spirited marches and merry jigs. Crowds gathered outside the homes and offices of various dignitaries and called for them to come out and address them, but of the many who complied, only the few loudest could be heard over the din. An eight-hundred-gun salute shook the city, three hundred booms for the fall of Petersburg, five hundred for Richmond. As the afternoon passed, Elizabeth observed many young men—and many more without the excuse of the foolishness of youth—celebrating by indulging in too much liquor, and she was alternately scandalized and amused to observe neighbors she knew to be sober, responsible folk tottering down the streets, singing and proclaiming the glory of President Lincoln, General Grant, and the Union Army in loud, slurring voices. Tomorrow they would regret their overindulgence, but for the moment, nothing could diminish their rejoicing, or Elizabeth’s.

  President Lincoln had been in Virginia since the last week in March, and he was meeting with General Grant in Petersburg when Richmond fell. He decided to tour the captured Southern capital the next day, and when Mrs. Lincoln heard of his plans, she proposed to meet him at City Point on the James River and accompany him into the conquered city.

  This would be Mrs. Lincoln’s second trip to General Grant’s City Point headquarters within two weeks. She and Tad had traveled there with the president and a small party the week before, but Mrs. Lincoln had returned early, and alone, leaving Tad behind with his father. Mrs. Lincoln had not explained why she had cut her visit short, and although she had been abrupt with Elizabeth when asked about her travels, she had revealed enough for Elizabeth to conclude that the tour had been something of a disaster. When the party had gone out to review the troops, the president had ridden ahead on horseback accompanied by General Grant and two officers’ wives, but Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant had been obliged to trail after them in an ambulance slowed to a crawl by shin-deep mud. Mrs. Lincoln finally arrived to find that the review had already begun and that the beautiful wife of Major General Ord was riding alongside Mr. Lincoln in a place of honor that properly belonged to herself. Seized by one of her jealous fits, she gave the young Mrs. Ord a terrible tongue-lashing, hurled abuse upon the astonished Mrs. Grant, and ferociously attacked her husband in front of everyone, demanding that he fire Major General Ord immediately, a command her husband quite reasonably ignored. Elizabeth did not know whether Mrs. Lincoln had fled back to Washington in shame or if Mr. Lincoln had ordered her away, but apparently, time to reflect and knowing that the incident had cost her a chance to see her son Robert had chastened her. When she mentioned that she was determined to try again to see Richmond, Elizabeth asked if she might accompany her. Years before, Petersburg had been her home, and she was curious to see it again, to
stroll along its familiar streets as a free woman.

  On April 5, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Mrs. Lincoln, Tad, Elizabeth, and the rest of their party, which included Senator Charles Sumner; Secretary of the Interior James Harlan; Mrs. Harlan, whose green-and-white striped silk dress Elizabeth had belatedly begun; Miss Mary Harlan, the young lady Robert Lincoln was courting; and several other gentlemen departed Washington on the steamer Monohasset. When they arrived at Fort Monroe the following morning, Mrs. Lincoln learned that President Lincoln had entered Richmond two days before.

  “Are you sure you meant to say Richmond?” the First Lady queried the aide-de-camp, crestfallen. Elizabeth knew she had strongly hinted to her husband that she wanted him to wait for her so they might tour the fallen capital together. “In his telegram he said he went to Petersburg.”

  He had done that first, Mrs. Lincoln was promptly assured. It was the following morning that he had entered Richmond, scarcely a day after the Confederate army had evacuated, while flames still licked at the ruins. The aide-de-camp, apparently oblivious to Mrs. Lincoln’s deepening frown, went on to tell them that a group of colored workmen had recognized the president from a distance and, to his embarrassment, had shouted, “Glory, hallelujah!” at his approach and had fallen to their knees to kiss his feet. “Please don’t kneel to me,” President Lincoln had told them. “You must kneel only to God and thank Him for your freedom.” Escorted by the German-born general Godfrey Weitzel, Mr. Lincoln had toured the Confederate White House and had sat at Jefferson Davis’s desk. Later he and his escort had passed the infamous Libby Prison, where thousands of captured Union soldiers had suffered starvation, disease, and unimaginably cruel treatment—and where Mr. Lincoln’s own brother-in-law, Confederate captain David Humphreys Todd, had served as a warden.

  “I see,” said Mrs. Lincoln flatly when the aide-de-camp finished his report. Immediately she stormed to the telegraph office and sent her husband several urgent messages imploring him to wait and to allow her party to join him on his boat, since theirs was dreadfully uncomfortable and she much desired to see Richmond by his side. After some back-and-forth, the arrangements were made, and soon the First Lady’s party joined the president’s aboard the River Queen, steaming up the James River, traveling with swift ease along a route that not long before had been impassible even to Union gunboats. Elizabeth spent hours on deck, holding on to the railing and lifting her face to the sun, savoring the breeze and the pure, balmy air. The river flowed along majestically, and its banks were lovely and fragrant with the first sweet blossoms of spring. Beyond them stretched fair fields, the very image of peacetime bounty—but all too often, the illusion of prosperity was broken by glimpses of deserted army camps and ruined forts, the ugly detritus of war.

  Elizabeth had not glimpsed the fertile fields and green hills of her birthplace for years, and she had long yearned to see them again. Virginia would forever remind her of her mother, and her father, her aunts and uncles and cousins, her son, George, as a babe in her arms, her mother’s warm kisses, the hours spent in the company of those she loved best. Her childhood had been difficult, full of pain and fear and loss, and yet she treasured a few precious, golden memories of those years. When she had embarked for City Point, a part of her so deep she was unaware of it had expected the journey to reunite her somehow with all she had lost. As the River Queen carried her along, the sad, unsettling truth of her own expectations dawned upon her, and she felt the first stirrings of regret.

  Perhaps she should not have come.

  At long last the River Queen arrived in Richmond, and, brimming over with curiosity, Mrs. Lincoln’s party entered the smoldering city. Elizabeth would not admit it aloud, but she also felt the smallest stirring of apprehension. The streets were unnaturally subdued, save for a few citizens who averted their eyes as they hurried past on business of their own, and occasional patrols of Union soldiers. The Virginia statehouse where the Confederate congress had met was in a state of disarray that spoke of fear and haste—desks broken, papers scattered, chairs overturned as if their last occupants had fled in alarm. While her companions walked ahead, marveling at the desolation the Confederate congress had left in the wake of their flight, Elizabeth gathered her skirts in one hand and bent to pick up a handful of documents. She skimmed the first page, and her abrupt, ironic laugh when she realized what she held caused Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Harlan to glance over their shoulders at her, curious. “It’s a resolution,” Elizabeth said, indicating the papers. “It prohibits all free colored people from entering the State of Virginia.”

  Senator Sumner shook his head and snorted, but another gentleman in the party, the Marquis de Chambrun, smiled and said, “My dear madam, I think you need not fear that anyone will come to arrest you on that account.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Elizabeth replied. “I confess that had not even occurred to me.”

  “Are you going to save those papers as a keepsake?” Mrs. Lincoln inquired. She often teased Elizabeth about her attachment to objects that evoked fond memories.

  “I think not,” said Elizabeth shortly, and let the papers fall to the floor.

  They moved on to the senate chamber, where Elizabeth sat in President Jefferson Davis’s chair and gazed around the room, imagining it filled with rebel senators and contemplating the many decisions he must have made from that very place, and what they had cost him, what they had cost them all. When she moved on to the vice president’s chair to give the others a chance to try the president’s, her thoughts flew to Mrs. Davis and her children. She imagined them in flight or in hiding, hastening south to the imperfect sanctuary of their Mississippi home or cowering beneath the sheltering roof of a brave and loyal friend. Wherever they were, Elizabeth hoped Mrs. Davis and the children were safe. They were blameless, and she prayed no harm would come to them. As for Mr. Davis, before the war she had liked him and had considered him a gentleman, but he had made his choices and would have to live with the consequences. She would never wish suffering upon him, but she thought it unlikely that he would survive the war unscathed.

  Later the party visited the Confederate executive mansion on K Street, which had also been called the White House, although it was gray stucco. The Richmond ladies in charge of its safekeeping glared at them darkly as they toured the elegant three-story residence, but they were in no position to bar any of them from exploring wherever they pleased. Elizabeth could not help but search each room for signs of her former patron—a forgotten quilt in the second-floor nursery, a dress that could not be stuffed into an overfull satchel—but she found nothing, and the absence made her feel oddly despondent.

  With a will, she endeavored to cease brooding and to adopt her companions’ cheerful curiosity. Eventually their lively spirits elevated hers, and by the time they returned to the River Queen, she too felt a flush of triumph and renewed hope that the end of the war could not be long in coming.

  It was a merry party that gathered around the dining table in the ship’s cabin that evening. For Elizabeth it was a special pleasure to dress Mrs. Lincoln for an event to which she herself was invited. Introductions were made all around, and they were chatting pleasantly about their impression of Richmond when one guest, a young captain attached to the Sanitary Commission, turned to the First Lady and said, “Mrs. Lincoln, you should have seen the president the other day, on his triumphal entry into Richmond. He was the cynosure of all eyes. The ladies kissed their hands to him, and greeted him with the waving of handkerchiefs. He is quite a hero when surrounded by pretty young ladies.”

  “Is he, indeed,” said Mrs. Lincoln, her voice brittle with frost.

  The young officer’s pleasant smile faltered. “Why, yes, Mrs. Lincoln. Quite a hero.”

  Elizabeth’s heart sank, but before she could think of a way to gracefully change the subject, Mrs. Lincoln fixed him with a steely glare and said, “And do you find him that way often? Surrounded by pretty young ladies, I mean?”

  The captain flushed
. “Why, no, Mrs. Lincoln, that is to say—” He glanced frantically down the length of the table, but his friends were too startled to come to his rescue.

  “That is to say what, precisely?” Mrs. Lincoln prompted him sharply.

  Elizabeth muffled a sigh and resisted the urge to slouch in her chair and stare at her plate as Mrs. Lincoln needled the poor young man, who would surely never forget his wretched evening aboard the president’s steamer. Mrs. Lincoln made quite a scene before she wore herself out, and Elizabeth felt both indignant and embarrassed as she observed the other guests exchanging knowing looks and regarding the president with sympathy. They did not understand what Mrs. Lincoln had been through those past few days, how overtired she was from her travels, or they would have shown her more compassion and understanding.

  Even so, Elizabeth found herself wishing that Mrs. Lincoln could learn to rein in her tempers, so it would not always fall to others to accommodate them.

  The next morning, the entire party decided to visit Petersburg, and Elizabeth was only too eager to accompany them. As the president’s special train sped them ever closer to the city where Elizabeth had been a slave twenty years before, her heart pounded with excitement and dread. She did not know what she would find there, what, if anything, would remain of the life she had once known—what, if anything, she wanted to remain.

  When they disembarked at the station, Elizabeth parted company with the others; while they headed out to inspect forts and hospital camps and to confer with generals, she wandered off on her own in search of people she had known in days gone by. The city was at once both unsettlingly familiar and greatly changed. Many houses she had once admired had suffered neglect or damage from artillery; some shops that she had often visited on errands for her mistresses had shuttered their windows or displayed different names in their windows or upon their doors. She glimpsed familiar faces among the people she passed, but they walked by her without a glimmer of recognition in their eyes. Almost unwillingly, she made her way down to the riverfront where she and James had once strolled, sharing conversation and hopes and dreams—and in James’s case, lies. Her heart sank deeper into sorrow with every step, and she was just about to turn and hasten back to the train station when she heard a woman behind her call, “Elizabeth? Lizzie Hobbs?”