Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Every window of the White House was illuminated by hundreds of tiny candles arranged in tiers on slender strips of wood, but the flickering candlelight must have seemed insufficient, for at once a cry went up for someone to fetch a lamp. When it was brought, Elizabeth heard little Tad cry, “Let me hold the light, Papa! Let me hold the light!”

  Mrs. Lincoln gestured and said something that Elizabeth could not make out, but she must have asked for her son’s wish to be granted, for the lamp was passed to him.

  “We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart,” the president began, and a hush fell over his listeners. “The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression cannot be restrained.”

  Yes, Elizabeth thought, yes, and the compassion and thankfulness in his voice filled her heart until it seemed to lift her upward. Emma drew in a breath and touched Elizabeth on the arm, and Elizabeth knew that her young friend was as moved by the striking tableau as she was—father and son standing together in the presence of thousands of free citizens, the elder pronouncing eloquent ideas for the fate of a nation, the younger looking up at him with proud admiration.

  Elizabeth stood not far from the president, and after he praised the military and turned to the fraught subject of reconstruction, the light from Tad’s lamp fell fully upon him, so that he stood out boldly against the night. A sudden, chilling thought struck Elizabeth then, and drawing closer to Emma, she murmured, “What an easy matter it would be to kill the president, as he stands there! He could be shot down from the crowd, and no one would be able to tell who fired upon him.”

  Bleakly, Emma nodded. Elizabeth could hardly pay attention to the rest of the speech, so afraid was she that one of the many vicious men who had sent him violent, threatening letters lurked within the shadowed throng below. Only a few days before, Elizabeth had overheard Mrs. Lincoln requesting additional protection for her husband, and soon thereafter officers from the Metropolitan Police had been posted at the White House to handle new threats of arson, kidnapping, and other terrors. But since then, General Lee’s surrender seemed to have eased Mrs. Lincoln’s perpetual worries, at least a little. Even so, Elizabeth found herself seized by an intense, foreboding dread that the president’s enemies had not abandoned their hatred when General Lee conceded defeat at Appomattox.

  Suddenly Emma clutched her arm, and a smile lit up her face. Pulled from her dark reverie, Elizabeth quickly picked up the threads of the president’s speech. “It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man,” Mr. Lincoln said, referring to criticism of the new Louisiana state constitution. “I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.”

  Elizabeth managed just in time to muffle a gasp. Unless her ears were deceiving her, the president had just told the world that he approved of enfranchisement for black Union soldiers and certain other men of color.

  “Can he mean it?” Emma asked in a whisper. “Will our men be permitted to vote?”

  “I think they will be,” Elizabeth whispered in reply, a thrill of excitement putting a tremble in her voice. Perhaps that would be only the beginning. Perhaps the lady suffragists would finally have their way too. Elizabeth could imagine the obstacles tumbling over one after the other like books on a too-crowded shelf: First colored soldiers would be allowed to vote, and then prominent black men, and then all black men, and then white women, and last of all but finally, women of color like her and Emma and Virginia. It could happen. Some people had said that slavery would be with them forever, and yet it had been abolished. Good people with strong convictions could overturn any injustice if they simply refused to quit. But even as she took heart, Elizabeth could not forget that the march to justice had ever been arduous and long, and the changes she yearned for might not come within her lifetime.

  But she had already witnessed so many remarkable events since coming to Washington City. Why might not universal suffrage be another?

  Elizabeth’s thoughts were still full of the night’s splendors when she went to the White House the following Saturday, and yet, after thanking Mrs. Lincoln for allowing her and Emma to attend, something compelled her to mention the sudden apprehension she had felt when Mr. Lincoln stood dangerously illuminated and vulnerable before the crowd.

  “Yes, yes, Mr. Lincoln’s life is always exposed,” Mrs. Lincoln agreed, sighing. “Ah, no one knows what it is to live in constant dread of some fearful tragedy. The president has been warned so often that I tremble for him on every public occasion. I have a presentiment that he will meet with a sudden and violent end.”

  “I suppose it is only natural that you should worry,” said Elizabeth, thinking again of the dreadful letters Mr. Lincoln received nearly every day. Mrs. Lincoln received her fair share too, though not as many as her husband.

  Mrs. Lincoln shook her head. “I said presentiment. I’m not speaking of ordinary worries and fears that might plague anyone in my circumstances, any wife whose husband has made enemies. The sensation is much too powerful for that.”

  Mrs. Lincoln seemed so certain, so despondent, that Elizabeth wished she had never encouraged her when she had consulted spiritualists after Willie’s death. Surely one of them had planted this sepulchral notion in her head when she was tormented with grief.

  She was quiet too long, for Mrs. Lincoln frowned and said, “I know that look. You think I’m being foolish, but you’re too polite to say so. Well, what would you think if I told you Mr. Lincoln shares my beliefs?”

  “I—would not know what to think,” said Elizabeth, taken aback.

  “He has had several premonitions himself.” Mrs. Lincoln pressed her lips together and inhaled deeply, and a furrow appeared between her brows. “The first came to him a few days after the election in 1860, when we were still in Springfield. The weight of his new responsibilities was settling upon him, and he was having trouble sleeping. He was in his office chamber reclining on a lounge, when his gaze fell upon the mirror and he saw his image reflected with two faces, one much paler than the other. He was very unsettled by the sight, and little wonder. I believe the vision meant that he would be elected twice, but not live out his second term.”

  Shaken, Elizabeth nonetheless mustered up enough skepticism to ask, “Mr. Lincoln himself believes this was a vision, not merely a trick of the light upon a poor glass and weary eyes?”

  “Well, if he did not say so, it was evident from his manner. But there have been others. He has a strange recurring dream preceding events of great significance. He describes himself as aboard a ship—he cannot describe it but he knows it always to be the same vessel—moving swiftly toward a dark and indefinite shore. He had this dream before Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg.”

  “Goodness.” Elizabeth shivered as if Mrs. Lincoln’s very words carried a chill. “But if this dream is somehow prophetic, it seems to presage victory, not death.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” Suddenly tears sprang into Mrs. Lincoln’s eyes. “But I have not yet told you the worst of his dreams. I truly wish he had never told me.”

  “Why, Mrs. Lincoln.” Alarmed, Elizabeth took her by the elbow and guided her to a seat on the sofa. “Perhaps we’ve dwelt too long on this subject—”

  “No. No. I’ve begun and I must tell you the rest.” Mrs. Lincoln took out her handkerchief, dabbed at her eyes, and distractedly twisted the fine white cloth into a rope on her lap. “Only a few days ago, Mr. Lincoln and I were chatting with his guard Mr. Lamon and a few others when the conversation turned to the abundance of dreams in the Bible. ‘If we believe the Bible,’ my husband said, ‘we must accept the fact that in the old days God and His angels came to men in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams.’ When I asked what had prompted the remark, he first asserted that he did not believe in dreams, and then he went on to describ
e a dream that he’d had a few nights before, and which has strangely annoyed him ever since.”

  “What was this dream?” asked Elizabeth uneasily, though she almost didn’t want to know.

  “He told us that about ten days before, he had retired very late because he had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. He was not long in bed when he fell into a weary slumber and began to dream. He said there seemed to be a deathlike stillness about him, and then he heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. In the dream he left his bed and wandered downstairs, where the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. Though he searched from room to room, and saw no one, the same mournful sounds of distress met him everywhere he went. The rooms were lit, and every object was familiar, but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? He became puzzled and alarmed, wondering what could be the meaning of all this. Determined to find the cause of circumstances so mysterious and so shocking, he kept on until he arrived at the East Room—where he met with a sickening surprise. Before him was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Soldiers were standing guard all around while throngs of people gazed mournfully upon the deceased, whose face was covered, and some wept pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ my husband demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The president,’ came the answer. ‘He was killed by an assassin.’ Then a loud, terrible wail of grief went up from the mourners and woke him.”

  “How dreadful,” exclaimed Elizabeth. No wonder the president had grown so gaunt and weary, if such terrible imaginings plagued him at night. “But, Mrs. Lincoln, you must not fear that this nightmare will come to pass.”

  Mrs. Lincoln regarded her flatly. “You said yourself that it would have been an easy matter for an assassin to kill him as he stood at that window last night.”

  And how Elizabeth regretted saying so. “What I mean is that you should not believe that these are anything more than troubled dreams. They are not glimpses into the future. It would be astonishing if Mr. Lincoln did not have nightmares prompted by the threats made against him—in fact, it is a testament to his strength that he does not have more of them.”

  Mrs. Lincoln looked as if she wished she could believe her. “I’ve ordered the guards increased, but I don’t know what else I could—”

  She broke off abruptly as the door opened and Mr. Lincoln entered. Mrs. Lincoln quickly composed herself, but something in Mr. Lincoln’s expression told Elizabeth that he had detected her mood in that brief interval before she concealed it. He greeted them, peered curiously at them for a moment, and went to the window, where he gazed out upon the yard, smiling. “Madam Elizabeth,” he said suddenly, turning to her. “You are fond of pets, are you not?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” she answered.

  “Well, come here and look at my two goats.”

  Elizabeth caught Mrs. Lincoln’s eye; she discreetly nodded and gestured for Elizabeth to go ahead. When she stood beside him at the window, he nodded to the goats frolicking on the grass below. “I believe they are the kindest and best goats in the world,” he declared, his eyes twinkling with good humor. “See how they sniff the clear air, and skip and play in the sunshine. Whew! What a jump,” he exclaimed as one of the goats bounded high over a stony patch. “Madam Elizabeth, did you ever before see such an active goat?”

  She smiled. “Not that I can recall, sir.”

  “He feeds on my bounty, and jumps for joy,” Mr. Lincoln mused. “Do you think we should call him a bounty-jumper?”

  Elizabeth laughed at his play on words. “If you’d like to, Mr. President, I don’t see why not.”

  “But I flatter the bounty-jumper,” he said. “My goat is far above him. I would rather wear his horns and hairy coat through life, than demean myself to the level of the man who plunders the National Treasury in the name of patriotism.” A sudden shadow fell over his face. “The man who enlists into the service for a consideration, and deserts the moment he receives his money but to repeat the play, is bad enough, but the men who manipulate the grand machine and who simply make the bounty-jumper their agent in an outrageous fraud are far worse. They are beneath the worms that crawl in the dark hidden places of earth.”

  Before Elizabeth could reply that with the national draft ended, the bounty hunters would no longer be able to profit as they had, both goats looked up at the window and shook their heads in a friendly sort of way. “See, Madam Elizabeth?” said the president, brightening. “My pets recognize me. How earnestly they look. There they go again; what jolly fun!” He laughed out loud as the goats bounded swiftly to the other side of the yard.

  “Come, Lizzie,” Mrs. Lincoln called out sharply. “If I want to get ready to go down this evening I must finish dressing myself, or you must stop staring at those silly goats.”

  Elizabeth exchanged a quick look of understanding with the president before hurrying back to Mrs. Lincoln. The First Lady was not overly fond of pets, and she could not understand why Mr. Lincoln took such delight in his goats. Elizabeth would never say so, but she thought Mrs. Lincoln ought to be glad for any pleasant distraction Mr. Lincoln found from his cares. His goats, his favorite authors, conversations with intelligent friends, and the occasional night at the theater were rare respites from the unrelenting pressures of his high office.

  Elizabeth finished dressing Mrs. Lincoln quickly, unconcerned with her patron’s frown of annoyance. It would fade soon enough, and in the meantime, Elizabeth would rather have Mrs. Lincoln irritable than anxious and brooding over dark, imagined omens, the cruel offspring of a mind weary from strain and sorrow and too much toil.

  A few days later, early on the morning of Good Friday, Elizabeth walked to the White House with the bodice, skirt, and sleeves of a new spring frock to fit for Mrs. Lincoln, an embroidered French muslin with cap sleeves and a delicate lace trim around the neckline. Already the First Lady was looking forward to moving to the Soldiers’ Home for the summer, where she hoped her husband would rest and regain his vigorous good health. The war had demanded much of him, and reconstruction would likely demand more, but as General Sherman advanced in North Carolina, it seemed that the war would soon end, at long last. The worst was certainly behind them.

  Elizabeth turned onto Fifteenth Street just as colored soldiers marched past flanking columns of captured rebel troops. Onlookers did not mock them, but instead offered them sympathetic glances or pretended not to notice them rather than add to their disgrace. They could have hurled insults—or bricks, if they were truly vengeful—but most Washingtonians seemed to feel as Elizabeth did, that these unfortunate captives surely wanted only to go home, just as Northern fathers, sons, brothers, and sweethearts wanted more than anything else to return to their families. With the war so near its conclusion, and the outcome certain, everyone wanted nothing more than for it to end before any more blood was shed.

  The sight of colored soldiers guarding white Confederate prisoners was no longer uncommon, and yet Elizabeth halted and watched the columns and guards pass, marveling. How the city had changed during the past four years—and even just in the past week. The exuberant rejoicing of the first days after General Lee’s surrender had settled into a calm sense of hope, gratitude, and peace, despite the ever-present concerns about what yet lay ahead. In all but the most radical, punitive hearts, Mr. Lincoln’s recent speech had inspired a mood of forgiveness and clemency. Elizabeth thought of the old friends she had seen in Petersburg the previous week, and all those she had known in Virginia and Missouri and even North Carolina, where she had been subjected to such torment, and she hoped the president’s plans for reconstruction would treat them gently.

  At the White House, she was pleased to find Mrs. Lincoln in a cheerful mood. Captain Robert Lincoln and General Grant had arrived that morning from Virginia, and over breakfast Robert had given his parents his firsthand account of General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. “What a momentous occasion i
t was,” Mrs. Lincoln remarked as Elizabeth helped her into the skirt and bodice, “and how fitting that the son of the president was there to witness it.”

  Mrs. Lincoln was in especially good spirits, not only because Robert was home and safe, and not only because the previous night Mr. Lincoln had again dreamed of the ship carrying him swiftly toward a distant shore, a dream that he believed foretold General Sherman’s imminent victory against General Johnston in North Carolina. “My husband sent me a note this morning,” she confided, “inviting me to go for a drive this afternoon.”

  Elizabeth had to smile. “He sent you a note? Wouldn’t it have been faster simply to ask you as you went in to breakfast together?”

  “Faster, but not half so charming,” rejoined Mrs. Lincoln. “It reminds me of the days of our courtship back in Springfield. We’ve endured so much since then that it’s often difficult to recall what it felt like to be young sweethearts.”

  Smiling, Elizabeth adjusted the neckline of the dress, slipping one pin and then another in place. “Perhaps a pleasant day together will help you remember.”

  “We both need a pleasant, restful day for other reasons besides, but I fear that my husband is not likely to see one today.”

  “Why not? Isn’t he entitled to a little holiday on Good Friday?”

  “If you could persuade him of that, you would have my undying gratitude. Since breakfast he has been sitting through conferences with legislators and petitioners, and after that his cabinet will be meeting. I may not see him at all until this afternoon—at which point I will insist that he have a proper luncheon before our ride instead of merely munching an apple at his desk. He grows gaunt and gray and people blame me for not feeding him enough.”