Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Gratified, Elizabeth wrote to Mrs. Lincoln about the plan, elated to have good news to share at last. But to her consternation, Mrs. Lincoln resisted. As desperate as she was for relief, she did not want to accept help from Negros. “I want neither Mr. Douglass nor Garnet to lecture on my behalf,” she decreed abruptly on the second day of November. Bewildered, and not a little disappointed, Elizabeth had no choice but to inform Mr. Douglass of Mrs. Lincoln’s wishes, and the project was immediately abandoned. Less than two weeks later, Mrs. Lincoln changed her mind, but her initial rebuff had surprised and disappointed colored leaders, and their enthusiasm for helping her had cooled.

  “Write to me, dear friend, your candid opinion about everything,” Mrs. Lincoln begged as the scandal swirled about her. “I pray God there will be some success,” she wrote on another occasion, “although, dear Elizabeth, entirely between ourselves, I fear I am in villainous hands.” “Alas! Alas!” she lamented the very next day. “What a mistake it has all been!” Mrs. Lincoln asked Mr. Brady and Mr. Keyes to return her wardrobe, and ordered Elizabeth to collect it, only to have the brokers defer her requests again and again. With Mrs. Lincoln losing heart, Elizabeth found it next to impossible to keep her own spirits aloft.

  In early January, in one last, desperate attempt to raise money from the “Old Clothes,” Mr. Brady and Mr. Keyes took a portion of the wardrobe to Providence, intending to launch a traveling expedition at Remington’s Hall, charging the “moderate consideration” of twenty-five cents each for admission. “The exhibition will bring in money,” Mr. Keyes told Elizabeth, “and as money must be raised, this is the last resort.” He assumed Mrs. Lincoln would approve, and Elizabeth assumed that he had consulted her beforehand, but both were mistaken. “Why did you not urge them not to take my goods to Providence?” Mrs. Lincoln demanded by return mail when informed of the plan, already under way. “For heaven’s sake see K & B when you receive this, and have my wardrobe immediately returned to me, with their bill.” Although advertisements ran in The Providence Journal announcing the exhibit, it never opened, for the Providence board of aldermen refused to grant the brokers a license. Nevertheless, Mrs. Lincoln was not mollified.

  Elizabeth soon inadvertently upset Mrs. Lincoln again. The needs of her own race, especially their education, were always in her thoughts, and it pained her that Wilberforce University, the school her son had attended, had burned to the ground on the day of President Lincoln’s assassination. Although she was preoccupied with discharging Mrs. Lincoln’s business, Elizabeth had agreed to lead a fund-raising drive to rebuild the college. She arranged with Reverend Daniel Payne, one of the college’s founders and a witness to her pension statement, to loan some of her Lincoln relics—Mr. Lincoln’s hat, cloak, gloves, comb, and brush, as well as Mrs. Lincoln’s bonnet and blood-spattered cloak—for an exhibition that would tour Europe. At the news of yet another exhibit linked to her name, Mrs. Lincoln became frantic. “Your letter announcing that my clothes were to be paraded in Europe—those I gave you—has almost turned me wild,” she immediately responded. “Robert would go raving distracted if such a thing was done. If you have the least regard for our reason, pray write to the bishop that it must not be done. How little did I suppose you would do such a thing; you cannot imagine how much my overwhelming sorrows would be increased. May kind heaven turn your heart…For the sake of humanity, if not me and my children, do not have those black clothes displayed in Europe. The thought has almost whitened every hair of my head.”

  The withering rebuke was almost more than Elizabeth could bear, and she immediately did as Mrs. Lincoln demanded.

  With dwindling hopes of ever receiving a commission from the sale of Mrs. Lincoln’s wardrobe, and with increasing worries about the damage to her reputation for her very visible role in the “Old Clothes Scandal,” Elizabeth realized that she must do something for herself, and rely no longer upon ephemeral expectations.

  She had accumulated several memory sketches since the summer day she had learned that the woman she had escorted around Washington City’s contraband camps was Miss Harriet Jacobs, the runaway slave from North Carolina who had bravely published her autobiography in 1861, using a pseudonym to protect herself from recapture and return to her horrifically abusive owner. Many other former slaves had also written their own life stories, including Mr. Frederick Douglass, whom she greatly admired. Though illiterate, Sojourner Truth had dictated her memoirs to a friend, and they had been published to great interest and acclaim. Why could Elizabeth not do the same? Mrs. Lincoln and Mr. Douglass, as well as the Garlands, had complimented her writing. Why should she not tell her own story?

  And so she took her memory sketches and began to fashion them into a memoir. She envisioned her book as tracing her life from her birth into slavery, through the sorrowful years of her youth, and on to her triumphant emergence into freedom. She would describe her years as Mrs. Lincoln’s personal modiste and White House intimate, and share her observations of the great, martyred president. She hoped to place Mrs. Lincoln in a better light before the world by revealing the innocent motives that had spurred her often misunderstood actions. Lastly, she would offer a detailed account of the so-called “Old Clothes Scandal,” to redeem her own good name as well as Mrs. Lincoln’s.

  “Do all you can, dear Mrs. Keckley,” Mr. Douglass had exhorted her as they planned the thwarted lecture series for Mrs. Lincoln’s benefit. “Nobody can do more than you in removing the mountains of prejudice toward that good lady.”

  Elizabeth believed he was right. No one knew Mrs. Lincoln the way she did, and no one could explain and justify her actions better than she, a friend and confidante who understood her good intentions.

  Elizabeth could do this much for Mrs. Lincoln, and since no one else would, she had to. She owed that much to the grieving widow—and even more so, to the memory of the noble, martyred president who had done so much for her race. For both of them, she resolved to try.

  Chapter Sixteen

  MARCH–JUNE 1868

  At first, Elizabeth was too embarrassed to confide in any of her New York acquaintances that she was writing her memoirs, even though many friends and patrons throughout the years had told her she ought to, since she had lived such an extraordinary life. But as the pages accumulated, she mentioned her manuscript to one friend, and then another, and eventually the tale found its way to Mr. James Redpath, a friend of Mr. Frederick Douglass and an editor with the publishing house G. W. Carleton & Company. Elizabeth had already met Mr. Redpath, but only in passing, and it was not quite accurate to say they knew each other. When she was living in St. Louis, some of her friends had spoken with the staunchly abolitionist Mr. Redpath when he came to the city to interview slaves for a book he was writing. He had also visited the White House often to advise President Lincoln on matters concerning Haiti, but although she had seen him there, they had never spoken. Having heard of her fledging memoir, however, he was eager to make her acquaintance, and mutual friends introduced them.

  The red-haired, fiery Scotsman called on her at her Broome Street boardinghouse, where she sat anxiously in the chair opposite his while he read the opening chapter of her memoir, the story of her birth and early childhood. She held her breath, waiting for his verdict, perching on the edge of her seat until he set her handwritten pages on his lap and said, “This is a promising start.”

  She exhaled deeply. “Thank you, sir.”

  “The story of Little Joe sold off by the pound and his poor mother running after the wagon as it sped away from the plantation…” Mr. Redpath shook his head, grim. “Tragic. Absolutely heartbreaking. I don’t suppose you know if they ever reunited?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Elizabeth. “Perhaps, after the war, they were able to find each other, but Little Joe was no more than four years old when he was sold to the Petersburg slaver. I imagine it would have been very difficult for him to retrace the path of dim childhood memories.”

  Mr. Redpath grunted and nodded. “T
ragic indeed.” He held up the pages of her manuscript. “Where have you taken the story after this, and where do you intend to go?”

  She explained her plan for the book, and his eyes lit up with eagerness when she mentioned that she hoped to devote a significant portion to her White House years and “Mrs. Lincoln’s Old Clothes Scandal.” She intended to share the profits of her book with Mrs. Lincoln, and to reveal the truth, the good and the bad, so that the world would better understand the former First Lady, who had been so unfairly maligned.

  “I admire your loyalty,” Mr. Redpath remarked. “Rest assured, Carleton and Company wants the truth presented to the world as much as you do—the good and the bad.”

  Within days Mr. Redpath brokered an agreement between Elizabeth and his publisher, and told her that they would like to publish her memoir as soon as possible, by spring at the latest. “But I have only just finished writing about how I purchased my freedom,” Elizabeth replied, her joy and alarm creating a dizzying muddle of her thoughts.

  He assured her that he would help, and so they agreed to meet several times a week to collaborate on the rest of the manuscript—daily, if necessary, as the deadline approached.

  From then on, by day Elizabeth attended to Mrs. Lincoln’s business and took in sewing to earn her keep, and by night she wrote in the quiet seclusion of her garret room. In the evenings, Mr. Redpath would call on her at her boardinghouse, and they would meet in the public parlor to review her previous night’s work. Sometimes, necessity and haste required her to merely jot down her recollections rather than writing lengthy paragraphs of elegant prose. On such occasions she would read aloud from her notes to Mr. Redpath, elaborating where needed, while her editor took notes of his own, which he took back to his office, combined with hers, and revised.

  Elizabeth passed her fiftieth birthday working with Mr. Redpath on the twelfth chapter of her memoir, an account of Mrs. Lincoln’s departure from the White House after her husband’s assassination. The next day, she received a letter from Mrs. Lincoln, who was despondent because she had forgotten her pocketbook, which held her entire allowance for the month, on the streetcar. “The loss I deserve for being so careless,” she lamented, “but it comes very hard on poor me. Troubles and misfortunes are fast overwhelming me; may the end soon come.”

  Mrs. Lincoln had so often said that only Tad kept her from taking her own life that Elizabeth did not know whether by “the end” she meant the end of her troubles or the end of everything. After so much repetition, laments of that sort should no longer have bothered Elizabeth, but they unsettled her anew every time.

  Every other scheme having failed, Mr. Brady and Mr. Keyes decided to put what remained of Mrs. Lincoln’s wardrobe—which was nearly all of it—up for public auction. Unwilling to dispose of her goods in such a manner, Mrs. Lincoln adamantly insisted that the brokers return everything to Elizabeth and settle her account. They took their time about it, but eventually they allowed Elizabeth to collect the unsold goods—at which time they presented her with a bill for $820, the charge for their services. They also kept several hundred dollars more that they had received for selling Mrs. Lincoln’s diamond ring and a few other items—for their expenses, they explained. Elizabeth promptly packed up Mrs. Lincoln’s wardrobe and shipped it back to her in Chicago, and when Mrs. Lincoln sent her a check for the bill, Elizabeth delivered it to Mr. Keyes personally. When she left his office on March 4, receipt in hand, she felt a wave of relief, resignation, and disgust wash over her. The whole ugly, ill-conceived business was over at last. Not only had it failed to raise any money for Mrs. Lincoln’s support, it had also cost her hundreds of dollars in brokers’ fees and incalculable damage to her reputation. But finally it was done.

  Although Elizabeth missed her home and friends in Washington City and urgently needed to reopen her dressmaking business, she decided to remain in New York until her manuscript could be completed. Since she no longer needed to reside within a convenient distance of W. H. Brady & Co., she moved to a less costly, fourth-floor garret room at No. 14 Carroll Place, the home of Mrs. Amelia Lancaster, a successful hairdresser to New York City’s elite.

  As she drew closer to the final chapters of her book, a certain sense of unease compelled Elizabeth to write to Mrs. Lincoln and tell her about it. After Mr. Herndon’s shocking lectures, Elizabeth expected Mrs. Lincoln to have misgivings, so she emphasized in the warmest terms that everything she wrote was designed to place Mrs. Lincoln before the world in the best possible light. Mrs. Lincoln acknowledged Elizabeth’s confession with a single line in her next letter: “It would appear that every former inmate of my beloved husband’s White House must inflict a memoir upon the public—I can only trust that my dearest friend would not write anything unkind, or betray any confidences.” Elizabeth had hoped for her to more explicitly bestow her blessing upon the project, but she accepted Mrs. Lincoln’s remarks as tacit permission to proceed. She could not have abandoned the book then in any case; she had invested too much of her time and industry, as well as Mr. Redpath’s.

  A few days later, Elizabeth finished writing her account of the disastrous attempt to sell Mrs. Lincoln’s wardrobe, the final chapter of her book. After Mr. Redpath read it, he praised her for her unflinching frankness and honesty in describing what surely must have been as embarrassing an episode for herself as it was for Mrs. Lincoln.

  “Unflinching?” echoed Elizabeth. “On the contrary, I did flinch, quite often, as I wrote it. I confess I’m very concerned about divulging Mrs. Lincoln’s private conversations and personal thoughts to the world.”

  Mr. Redpath’s brow furrowed in sympathy. “I understand completely. I promise you, nothing published in the book will hurt Mrs. Lincoln.”

  Elizabeth was relieved to hear it. “That pleases me very much.”

  “You’re nearly finished,” Mr. Redpath remarked, gathering the day’s pages into a neat stack. “You must be looking forward to completing the manuscript and returning to Washington.”

  “I am,” said Elizabeth tentatively. She had thought the manuscript was finished. “What else would you like me to add?”

  “Well, there’s the preface, which should describe your purpose and qualifications for writing a book of this nature.”

  “Oh, of course. I’ll begin it right away.”

  “I had another thought as well. The letters you’ve included from Mr. Douglass and the Garland ladies are most illuminating. Do you have any letters from Mrs. Lincoln? I’m sure your readers would find them fascinating.”

  Elizabeth felt a thrill of excitement and fear when he spoke of her readers, as if they already existed in eager multitudes. “I have many, but I simply could not include them in the book, fascinating or not. Mrs. Lincoln would not approve.”

  Mr. Redpath shrugged, thoughtful. “She allowed several letters to be printed in the World.”

  “Yes, and she deeply regretted it afterward.”

  “Ah.” Mr. Redpath nodded, thinking, and then ventured, “I don’t suppose you would let me read them?”

  “Are you merely curious?”

  “I am very curious, but not merely curious. Reading Mrs. Lincoln’s letters would give me a sense of her manner and intonation, which will be of great help to me as I edit your manuscript. The facts her letters include, too, will help me verify dates and details you have provided. And there is the matter of your credibility. Some foolish people will argue that a former slave never could have written such a fine book, nor gained admission to the most intimate circles of the White House in the first place. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of personal correspondence in establishing the authenticity of a biography.”

  “I understand,” said Elizabeth. She had heard of other former slaves’ memoirs that had been unfairly dismissed as works of fiction, and she knew many people who, after knowing her but a little while, insisted that she was far too dignified and talented to have ever been a slave. She could not bear to have anyone question her integrity, but
such accusations were probably inevitable. If she could forestall them or at least limit their number by sharing Mrs. Lincoln’s letters with her editor, she would be wise to do so.

  She went to her garret room and returned with a bundle of Mrs. Lincoln’s letters, neatly bound with a black ribbon left over from trimming one of her many bonnets. She gave them to Mr. Redpath with the understanding that they were precious mementoes and must be returned to her undamaged as soon as he was finished with them, and that they were only meant to assist him in editing her manuscript, not to become a part of it.

  Mr. Redpath assured her that he would publish nothing from Mrs. Lincoln’s letters that would embarrass her, and with that, he left Elizabeth to write her preface.

  Alone in her room, she held her pen hovering above the page, unable to begin. A twinge of doubt struck—who was she, to think she could write a book? Immediately she chased the thought away, impatient with her timidity. Who was she, indeed. She had written a book, so the question of whether she could had already been answered. Now all that remained was to explain why she had, and to what purpose.