Mary Todd Lincoln: A Complicated Life full of Grief

My knowledge of Mary Lincoln was limited to fictionalized accounts based on historical events: Lincoln, the Steven Spielberg film from 2012, and Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, the 2013 novel by Jennifer Chiaverini. Both of those focus on main characters close to Mary Lincoln, rather than on her specifically, so reading Catherine Clinton’s Mrs. Lincoln: A Life was my first exposure to a work distinctly about the former First Lady.

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It offered a well-rounded look at Mary Lincoln’s, and makes its own arguments around popular historical controversies such as Abraham Lincoln’s sexual orientation and Mary Lincoln’s mental health. Clinton comes down too strongly on the sides of definitely not homosexual and certainly of sound mind, respectively, for my liking, but I appreciate her attempts to address the historiographies.  

What I was struck by most in reading the manuscript was how difficult the Civil War must have been for Mary on a personal level. I never knew she grew up essentially as Kentucky gentry, meaning she had family members supporting, fighting, and dying for the Confederacy while she unfailingly supported her husband as President of the Union. Amidst horrible and often unfounded criticism in the press, Mary insisted on publicly supporting the Union cause, often traveling to the front lines and military hospitals to be with Union troops, all while personally mourning family losses to the Confederate cause, including half-brothers and a brother in-in-law, on top of mourning the tragic loss of her young son to illness early in the war years. It made me think about how someone’s personal experience with controversy can be much more complicated than anyone on the outside may truly understand.  

While death was much more a part of everyday life in the 19th Century than we of the 21st will ever truly understand, the compounding losses that Mary Lincoln experienced seem especially tragic – three sons dying before the age of twenty and a husband assassinated. Assuming she abided by strict Victorian mourning rituals, she would have spent a significant fraction of her life post-1850 in mourning garb, and the fact that she managed to rack up such high debts accumulating fabrics and other fashionable accoutrements is even more of an astonishing feat. Was it a symptom of undiagnosed bipolar disorder? Who am I to speculate? But I agree with recent arguments for a more complex understanding of how her prolonged grief may have affected her mental state or the public’s perception of it: Why Historians Should Reevaluate Mary Todd Lincoln's Oft-Misunderstood Grief | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine. 

On a side note, I never before stopped to consider Mary Todd Lincoln’s maiden name, which she shared with another prominent former First Lady, Dolley Madison, making them distant kin by marriage. I was reminded of the name during a trip to Philadelphia back in April, when we were able to view the Dolley Todd House. Unfortunately, the home has been closed since COVID, and we were unable to go on a tour, but here are a few photographs:

  

A Return: Harriet Lane Johnston

Image taken from Amazon.com

Just as Harriet Lane brought enthusiasm back to White House entertaining after its hiatus under Jane Pierce, her story also brings me back to blogging after the pandemic temporarily stalled interlibrary loan operations. Unfortunately, Milton Stern did not teach me all that much about the niece of President James Buchanan. 

I learned pretty much everything there was to know about "America's First Lady" from reading the preface and first chapter of Stern's book: Harriet Lane was the first woman to be referred to as First Lady, supposedly the "most admired woman of her time," a fashion trend-setter, a constant presence at events of the Washington social seasons even after her time in the White House, and generous to the city of Washington in her final bequests. 

Stern claims that he spent one third of his previous book, America's Bachelor President and the First Lady, on Harriet Lane but that there was enough in the research to devote a second book to her. Having now read that second book, I'm not sure I agree and wonder whether I should have read the first book instead. Harriet Lane, America's First Lady is a slim volume at 207 total pages, and only 104 of those pages are devoted to the actual story he is trying to tell. (More than 4 of those 104 pages simply contain a bulleted list of "selections from the society pages," used to offer an idea of events Mrs. Lane Johnston attended from 1888-1902.) The remaining 103 pages of the book include photographs, endnotes, a timeline of significant historical events from 1786-1861, the full text of select correspondence of James Buchanan and Harriet Lane Johnston, and the full text of both their the wills. (Oh, had I been able to just type out the text of the primary sources I used in developing my dissertation and call it a "book.") 

Rather than taking the time to do thorough primary and secondary research that would place Harriet Lane Johnston fully in the social and cultural context of her time and interrogate her life as a woman of means in a highly public role as compared to the societal expectations of women at the time, Stern spends at least half of his short text talking about the life of James Buchanan and the historical events that influenced his time in public service and as president. He literally spends two entire pages explaining the Dred Scott decision, which he later easily summarizes in two sentences in Annex A, titled The Effects of United States History on Harriet Lane's Seating Arrangements. His book would have been much more interesting had he actually attempted to explain how U.S. history affected Harriet Lane as she was busy making seating arrangements for high-profile, powerful men.  

I suppose it was interesting to learn that Ms. Lane had become close with Queen Victoria while accompanying her uncle during his appointment as Minister to the Court of St. James in England during the 1850s and that she later, as First Lady, prepared the social program for the U.S. visit of the Prince of Wales and also organized a successful state dinner for Japanese royalty. But the 19 pages devoted to her time as First Lady were riddled with overly long block quotes from primary sources and spent more space describing the exploits of Prince Edward than they did talking about Ms. Lane. It also left me wondering if Prince Edward and the dignitaries from Japan were the only significant guests she organized entertainment for, foreign or otherwise (assumedly not). 

In fact, the most successful parts of this book are the few sections that fictionalize brief moments in the life of Harriet Lane Johnston. The prose reads more smoothly and we get more insight into the inner thoughts of Harriet on her prominent role in Washington society. Perhaps it just goes to show that Stern, a writer, editor, and novelist, should consider writing historical fiction, leaving the history writing to professional historians who are more versed in the art of research and interpretation. Stern points out that "Most of Buchanan's personal correspondence was destroyed in a New York warehouse fire in the early 1900s," but he does not fully address what source material exists to tell the story of Harriet Lane Johnston. Perhaps one day a historian will delve deep into the Harriet Lane Papers at the Library of Congress and other relevant collections, integrate them with a thorough historiographical understanding of American history, and take up the challenge of writing a true, interpretive biography of "America's First Lady," one that devotes more time to her than to her uncle and the men surrounding her. In the meantime, I may have to seek out Stern's first book on Buchanan and Lane to see if I can learn more.