Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  But as pleasant as the sisters were, and as kindly as they treated her, Elizabeth was never entirely happy in their employ. She rarely glimpsed Mr. Johnson, so he was not the problem, although she could not forget how he had slighted Mrs. Lincoln by neglecting to offer his condolences after Mr. Lincoln’s death. She could not cross the threshold of the White House without remembering the pleasant hours she had once spent there or the kind familiarity Mr. Lincoln had always shown her. She missed collaborating with Mrs. Lincoln on a stunning new gown, as the sisters took little interest in fashion and preferred simple, long-sleeved garments with high necklines and collars and scant ornamentation. She missed hearing Mr. Lincoln address her as “Madam Elizabeth” and “combing down his bristles” before he escorted his wife to a levee. She even missed his silly, rambunctious goats. The White House held so many vivid associations for her that every step she took, every direction she turned, evoked a memory from a past more satisfying than the present. It pained her to be in the White House when Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln no longer could be.

  In August, Elizabeth had recently finished two light summer linen dresses, one for each sister, when Mrs. Patterson sent her a note requesting her to come to the White House to cut and fit another, warmer dress for her in anticipation of autumn. Some strange mood possessed Elizabeth in that moment, and she curtly wrote back that she never cut and fitted work outside of her workrooms. This brought her business relations with the president’s daughters to an abrupt end.

  Emma regarded Elizabeth curiously when she explained why they would not be sewing anything else for the White House hostesses. “You told them you never cut and fitted dresses except within your workrooms, but you used to do so for Mrs. Lincoln.”

  “Yes, on occasion, but Mrs. Lincoln never objected to coming here. In fact, I think she enjoyed it—perhaps even preferred it.”

  “I remember.” Emma regarded her from beneath raised brows. “I also recall that you used to say that you never approved of ladies attached to the presidential household coming to your rooms. You said it was more consistent with their dignity to send for you, and have you go to them.”

  “Well—” Elizabeth paused, thinking, but it was no use. “You’re quite right. I have said that, and I did feel that way. I do feel that way. I cannot explain why I responded to Mrs. Patterson as I did.”

  “I can explain,” said Emma, as if it were obvious. “You don’t want to work for them, but you don’t know how to refuse them.”

  “I must be mad to do so,” said Elizabeth, pressing a hand to her forehead. “They’ve been perfectly agreeable patrons, and who turns down work from the president’s daughters?”

  “The most popular modiste in Washington City, that’s who.” Emma swept her arm toward the busy workroom, where all of her assistants were industriously sewing, sitting up straight as she had taught them to avoid backaches and neck strain. “You’re not mad at all, nor were you impertinent. You didn’t refuse to work for Mrs. Patterson; you agreed to work for her, so long as the cutting and fitting took place here, and she declined.”

  Elizabeth sighed. “I suppose that is one way of looking at it.”

  “It’s the only way to look at it.” Emma smiled fondly and shook her head. “You can choose your customers, Elizabeth, and you can afford to be particular.”

  Looking around the workroom, Elizabeth realized that indeed, perhaps she could.

  By the end of summer, Elizabeth’s business had prospered so much that she opened a second shop in the market, but Mrs. Lincoln’s prolific correspondence revealed that she was faring far less well. She said virtually nothing about the June trial and July execution of the four conspirators condemned to die on the gallows for their part in her husband’s assassination, but she poured out her sorrow when she informed Elizabeth of the death of Dr. Anson Henry, one of the few friends from her Springfield days who had not abandoned her. “I will never forget how tenderly and solicitously he cared for me in the weeks after my beloved husband’s death,” she lamented. “To think of him lost at sea is almost more than I can bear.”

  Mrs. Lincoln also felt control of her husband’s legacy slipping from her grasp. She had won an important early skirmish when she overruled the Illinois dignitaries in choosing the location of her husband’s memorial and tomb, but another battle was brewing against an opponent she had not seen coming. Her husband’s former Springfield law partner, William H. Herndon, hoped to write a revelatory book about the president’s “inner life” and had taken to poking about asking Mr. Lincoln’s friends and acquaintances to confide their memories to him. Mrs. Lincoln was troubled by Mr. Herndon’s actions, but Robert was incensed. It was one matter to study a politician, he declared, because having his private life exposed to the public was part of the price he paid for his office. It was another thing altogether to subject his wife and children to such uninvited scrutiny, to compel them to live inside a “glass house.”

  All the while, the beauties of Hyde Park continued to elude her. “I am miserable,” Mrs. Lincoln wrote later in July. “I remain sequestered in my rooms except to take an occasional walk in the park, and of course I see no one, becalmed as I am on the far off shores of Lake Michigan.” In August, she quit the Hyde Park Hotel and moved herself and her sons to the Clifton House, a respected residential hotel at Wabash Avenue and Monroe Street in central Chicago. Tad enrolled in a local school and was determined to catch up to his peers, and Robert apprenticed at Scammon, McCagg & Fuller, a prominent Chicago law firm. But any satisfaction she might have found in her new residence and her sons’ accomplishments was dimmed by her ongoing torment. Grief stricken and feeling abandoned, Mrs. Lincoln remained terrified of poverty and debt, and it seemed she could think of little else. Her creditors had hesitated to pester her about her overdue bills when she was First Lady, but recently they had begun threatening to sue her and to publish lists of her debts in the papers. She wrote to friends, former White House staff, and members of the House of Representatives pleading her case and asking them to use their influence to assist her, and Elizabeth could well imagine the alternately desperate, hectoring, flattering, and relentless tone of her letters. Although her husband’s frequent critic Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, astonished Mrs. Lincoln by taking up a subscription to raise money for “the late president’s grieving widow and her fatherless sons,” her own efforts seemed all in vain.

  Elizabeth offered Mrs. Lincoln what encouragement and comfort she could through the mail, but it was never enough. It was a national shame, Elizabeth thought indignantly, that President Lincoln’s widow could not be better provided for. He had given his life for his country the same as any soldier, the same as her own dear George, and the least the government could do was to care for his widow and his children, the same as any soldier’s.

  In autumn, a woman—a stranger, Elizabeth believed—called on her at her boardinghouse. “You are surprised to see me, I know,” the woman greeted her happily. She was not a customer, nor anyone Elizabeth recognized from Washington, and yet her face was familiar. “I have just come from Lynchburg, and when I left cousin Anne, I promised to call on you if I came to Washington.” The woman beamed, spreading her hands. “I am here, you see, according to promise.”

  “Cousin Anne?” said Elizabeth, bewildered. “Pardon me, but—”

  “Oh, I see you do not recognize me,” the woman exclaimed. “I am Mrs. General Longstreet, but when I was a girl, you knew me as Bettie Garland.”

  “Bettie Garland,” Elizabeth gasped. Bettie Garland was the cousin of her former master, Hugh Garland, and had often visited the family at their former residence near Dinwiddie Court House in Virginia. “Is this indeed you?”

  The woman nodded, beaming, and they clasped hands, exclaiming with the delight that only an unexpected reunion could bring.

  “I am so glad to see you,” said Elizabeth, offering her guest a chair and seating herself. After buying her freedom, she had kept in touch with her former mistress and
her children—especially the daughters whom she had raised and loved—but their ties had been severed by the outbreak of war. Elizabeth had often wondered what had become of them, although whenever she mentioned their names and expressed concern for their welfare, her Northern friends would roll their eyes and ask how she could possibly spare a kind thought for those who had kept her in bondage. Try though she might, Elizabeth could not make them understand that despite the grave injustice done to her, and without condoning any part of it, she still felt a deep and abiding affection for a few particular members of the families that had owned her—though certainly not all of them. “Where does Miss Anne live now?”

  “Ah! I thought you could not forget old friends,” said Mrs. Longstreet. “Cousin Anne is living in Lynchburg. All the family are in Virginia. They moved there during the war.” Then her jubilance dimmed. “Fannie is dead. Nannie has grown into a woman and is married to General Meem. Hugh Junior was killed in the war, and now only Spotswood, Maggie, and Nannie are left.”

  “Fannie, dead!” Fannie was the Garlands’ third-eldest daughter and had been especially fond of Elizabeth’s mother, who had served as her nurse. “And poor Hugh! You bring sad news as well as pleasant.” Her thoughts flew to Nannie, who had been her special charge. She had shared Elizabeth’s bed, and Elizabeth had watched over her as if she had been her own child. Indeed, Elizabeth could not have loved her more if she had been. “I can hardly believe it. She was only a child when I saw her last.”

  “Yes, Nannie is married to a noble man. General Meem belongs to one of the best families in Virginia. They are now living at Rude’s Hill, up beyond Winchester, in the Shenandoah Valley. All of them want to see you very badly.”

  “I should be delighted to go to them,” Elizabeth declared. “Miss Bettie, I can hardly realize that you are the wife of General Longstreet, and just think, you are now sitting in the very chair in the very room where Mrs. Lincoln has often sat!”

  “The change is a great one, Lizzie,” she said, laughing ruefully. “We little dream today what tomorrow will bring forth. After fighting so long against the Yankees, my husband is now in Washington, suing for pardon, and we propose to live in peace with the United States.”

  Elizabeth was very pleased to hear it.

  She had many questions about old friends, and the time passed swiftly in conversation, but all too soon Mrs. Longstreet’s visit ended. Before she left, she gave Elizabeth the Garlands’ address, and the next day Elizabeth wrote to them, telling them of her life in Washington and expressing hope that she would be able to see them before long.

  When she told Virginia and Emma about Mrs. Longstreet’s visit and the letters she had sent to Miss Anne and her daughters, Emma shook her head in wonder, frowning. “I don’t know why you miss them so. I never, never wish to see any of my masters or mistresses again.”

  “I don’t wish to see all of my old masters,” Elizabeth pointed out. “There are some I can never forgive. But I understand why you feel the way you do, Emma. Your break with your last master and mistress was particularly unpleasant. They should never have refused to abide by your mistress’s will, so they have only themselves to blame for the lawsuit. I bought my freedom. Perhaps that makes the difference.”

  “I hope you won’t be disappointed, Elizabeth,” said Virginia, her brow furrowing with concern. “I suspect your old mistress and her daughters have forgotten you. Surely they’re like all of their kind, too selfish to give a single thought to you now that you’re no longer their slave.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Elizabeth, “but I cannot believe it. Did they not ask Miss Bettie to call on me? You don’t know the Southern people as I do. Though master and slave, we had a warm attachment.”

  Virginia and Emma exchanged a dubious look, and Elizabeth suspected that they could debate the matter forever and her friends still would not understand her point of view. “You have some strange notions, Elizabeth,” Emma remarked, shaking her head.

  Of all her acquaintances, only Mrs. Lincoln seemed to understand her enduring affection. “Certainly the Garlands will not have forgotten you,” she responded after Elizabeth wrote to her about Mrs. Longstreet’s visit. “I have never forgotten my beloved Sally, and how tenderly she cared for me throughout my early years. I do not mean to speak ill of my dear mother when I say that Sally raised me. After my mother died, I do not know what I should have done without Sally, as my father’s new wife considered all of us stepchildren a burden, and was much preoccupied with her own children. No, Elizabeth, they cannot have forgotten you.”

  Heartened, Elizabeth waited anxiously for a reply to her letters, and she did not have long to wait. Her heart soared when the first of many long missives came from various members of the family, warm affection filling every line. For months they exchanged letters, and in the winter, Miss Nannie—now Mrs. General Meem—wrote that she and her husband would be very glad to have Elizabeth visit them in the summer. “You must come to me, dear Elizabeth,” Miss Nannie entreated. “I am dying to see you. We are now living at Rude’s Hill. Ma, Maggie, Spot, and Minnie, sister Mary’s child, are with me, and only you are needed to make the circle complete. Come—I will not take no for an answer.”

  Elizabeth was delighted to accept, and after consulting with Emma and considering the likely state of dressmaking orders at one time and another, she wrote back telling Miss Nannie to expect her in August.

  Mrs. Lincoln was delighted for her but sorry for herself, that someone else would have the pleasure of Elizabeth’s company when she could not. Throughout the autumn, she had tried to sell some of her jewels and other luxury items, and had tried to return others to the stores where she had purchased them, but the effort proved futile. Shortly before Christmas, Congress informed her that they would not give her Mr. Lincoln’s salary for his entire second term, as she had asked, but would only part with one year’s pay, which after deductions amounted to little more than twenty-two thousand dollars, equal to only a small fraction of her debts. Later that winter, Congress granted President Johnson seventy-five thousand dollars to refurbish the White House, and humiliating criticism appeared in the New York World and other papers saying that Mrs. Lincoln had left behind a ransacked mansion and mountains of overdue bills that continued to plague merchants throughout the city. The persistent Mr. Herndon had succeeded in collecting letters, interviews, and statements from people who had known Mr. Lincoln—some quite well, some barely at all—and was delivering lectures drawn from the material, which he hoped to publish as a book. Still eager to interview Mrs. Lincoln, he had sent his request to Robert, but both he and his mother were unsettled by his phrasing: “I wish to do her justice fully—so that the world will understand things better. You understand me.” Mrs. Lincoln did not clearly understand him at all, she fretted to Elizabeth. “What precisely does he mean by do me justice fully?” she had written to Elizabeth. “He puts on a foreboding tone that I do not like. And yet I feel it may be necessary to speak with him. If I do not give him my truth, he may invent his own.”

  Worse yet had been the anniversaries of days that had brought Mrs. Lincoln anguishing memories of loss—November 4, her first wedding anniversary without her husband; December 13, her forty-seventh birthday; December 21, Willie’s birthday; New Year’s Day, marking the start of another year without the loved ones she mourned; February 1, the date of her son Eddie’s death; and February 12, Mr. Lincoln’s birthday. All of these melancholy dates built up to the worst, most unbearable anniversary, April 15, the date of her husband’s assassination. She suffered too on March 30, Good Friday, for it was on the night of Good Friday that he had been shot. “I am desperately unhappy and do not think I will be able to get through the day without you by my side,” she wrote to Elizabeth as the end of March loomed nearer. She reminded Elizabeth of the promise she had made upon her departure from Chicago, that if Congress had granted her a widow’s pension, Elizabeth would return and accompany her to Springfield to visit her husband’s tomb on the a
nniversary of his death. The appropriation was not made, and so Elizabeth could not go. Mrs. Lincoln traveled with Tad instead, arranging her travel plans at odd times and along circuitous routes to avoid encountering any old friends.

  Elizabeth could not go to Illinois that spring, but she did go to Virginia in summer. On August 10, the fourth anniversary of her son George’s death, Elizabeth boarded the train for Harpers Ferry, eagerly anticipating her reunion with the Garlands. The journey was not without mishaps. The train arrived at Harpers Ferry at night, but Elizabeth slept through the stop and was carried to the next station, where she was obliged to wait for another train to take her back. Once there, she intended to change cars for Winchester, but she had missed the train and was detained another day. Arriving at last in Winchester, she learned that the only way to reach Rude’s Hill was by a series of stagecoaches. The drive commenced in the evening and would last through the night, but Elizabeth was so exhausted she could scarcely keep her eyes open. A young gentleman riding in the stage told Elizabeth that he knew General Meem well and that he would tell her when they had reached the proper place for her to disembark. Thus reassured, Elizabeth drifted off to sleep.

  “Aunty.” Someone was shaking her. “Aunty, didn’t you want to get out at Rude’s Hill?”

  “Yes, I did.” Elizabeth straightened in her seat, rubbing her eyes. “Are we there?”

  As she spoke, her gaze fell upon the young man who had promised to wake her, and she discovered him softly snoring.

  “More than there,” the man who had woken her said. “We have passed it.”

  “Passed it?”

  “Yes. It is six miles back. You should not sleep so soundly, Aunty.”

  “Why did you not tell me sooner?” Elizabeth cried. “I am so anxious to be there.”

  “Fact is, I forgot it,” he said with a shrug. “Never mind. Get out at this village, and you can find conveyance back.”