An Unlikely Friendship (11 page)

But what did it mean? What was I?

It was Mercy who told me. She stood in the small room I shared with her and watched as I unpacked my trunk.

"Orphans," she said. "This part of the building is known, here and on the outside, as the house for the orphans."

"Orphans?" I stared at her.

"Yes. None of us has a mother."

I started to speak, then stopped. She was serious. She was grave and dignified and not at all joking. She was dead serious. "I'm not an orphan," I said. I thought of Pa, of my brothers George and Levi, of my sisters Elizabeth and Frances and even Ann. I thought of the little ones I'd left at home.

"I have a family," I told her. "I'm just here because..." but my voice gave out.

"Because this is where they put you," she finished. "This is where they put all of us. Because they didn't know what to do with us. So we're here."

She was so accepting about it. But I wasn't. I suddenly lost the urge to unpack. The urge to do anything. Tears were forming in my eyes, I could feel them.
Oh, Pa,
I thought,
no wonder you looked so low this morning. You knew I'd find out about this, didn't you? You really were in a briar patch, weren't you?

I pushed my trunk aside on the floor and sank down on my bed. Had I been put here because they didn't know what else to do with me? But of course. Elizabeth and Frances and even Ann had their places. Ann knew how to survive around Betsy, something I'd never learned. As for George and Levi, well, when I left, Levi was asking Pa if he could move to a hotel in town. George still lived in his own world, though he ate at the table with the family. That left just me from Pa's first family.

I lay down on the bed and clutched my stomach as if I were ill.

"Are you all right?" Mercy asked. "Come on, Mary. Somebody had to tell you. It's the same for all of us here."

I turned over, crying. "Leave me be," I said.

S
HE LET ME BE
and went downstairs. Before she went, Mercy put a coverlet over me. "We're having a special supper to welcome everyone tonight," she said. "It's at six. Rest until then. I'll make your excuses."

It was clouding over outside and fixing to be a real rainy September afternoon. The wind was picking up, forcing leaves from the trees. I dozed.

I was conscious of someone coming into the room and fussing about, but I did not open my eyes. A headache was forming behind them. Lately I'd been getting mind-breaking headaches, and at home Mammy Sally always had some decoction to give me. Here I had nothing. I opened my eyes briefly and saw that someone had placed an astral lamp on my dresser. It gave a pleasant glow to the room.

Just then someone knocked and came in. It was Madame Charlotte.

"Child, what is it? Are you indeed ailing? Or is it homesickness already?"

I sat up. "I have a home," I said to her.

"But of course you do. This is your school."

"Then why am I called an orphan?"

She smiled and sat down next to me on the bed. "Oh, so that's it. We call all the motherless girls orphans. It's how they are known. It's in jest, dear, don't take on so."

"They don't think it's in jest."

She felt my forehead. "You have a slight fever."

I told her about my headaches and she nodded knowingly. "Migraine," she said. "You'll suffer all your life with them if you don't learn to take things more lightly. I can give you some laudanum. Come now, no more crying. We all have a wonderful time here."

"I never have a wonderful time anywhere," I told her. "My life is a disaster."

Her eyes narrowed. "Shall I tell you about my life?"

It was not a question. I was old enough to know when grown-ups asked questions that were not questions. So I nodded my head, yes.

"I
WAS THE ONLY
child of a wealthy Paris merchant. My father raised me as a boy. My father taught me to ride when I was just a knee baby, and as I grew he made me row, every morning, across the Seine before breakfast.

"I was afraid of death so he locked me in a closet with the corpse of a friend, overnight."

My eyes were wide with wonder. "But you are happy now, aren't you?"

"Yes, child. But my husband and I were forced to flee across France because revolutionary mobs wanted to burn our children at the stake."

My eyes were drowsy from the laudanum. Was she making up stories as she went along? Just before drifting off to sleep again I heard her say one more thing.

"It isn't what happens to you in life that matters, it's how you take it."

I
STAYED FOUR YEARS
at Madame Charlotte's. I never went home weekends and every day I could see, from my classroom window, Nelson draw the carriage up front to fetch Liz home from school.

True to Mercy Levering's predictions, I seldom saw Liz in school. She was in a different course of study than I was. I studied French. I read Shakespeare, Sterne, Pope, and Burns. I read and recited poetry.

I always had the lead in our French plays, and when Pa and Betsy and Ann came to see me and pronounced that I was like another person, it was because I was.

I no longer mourned the role assigned to me by Pa, being an orphan. I found pursuits to replace the needs that hole left in my life.

I learned dances, all I would need for my future life, whatever it might be. Evenings Monsieur Mentelle would play his fiddle and his wife would instruct us in cotillions, hornpipes, and all sorts of dances.

The first year I was at the head of my class. Every year following I got the highest marks.

I did talk to Liz during the school year. She told me that Mammy Sally's flowers on the front fence brought a lot of callers.

When I graduated, with the highest honors, Pa gave me money for a whole new wardrobe. And he gave me a trip to Springfield, Illinois, to see my sisters.

E
ARLY ON A
M
AY
morning I boarded the train for Frankfort, with my cousin John Todd Stuart helping me. He'd come all the way from Springfield to escort me back there. His lawyer business, he said, he'd left in the hands of his new partner, name of Abraham Lincoln.

"Don't expect too much from us," John Todd said to me as the stagecoach approached Springfield. "We're now the state capital, yes, but we're still a frontier village compared to Lexington, Mary. Don't be disappointed."

I was filled with excitement. "Why should I be disappointed?"

"You're such a belle. You're used to concerts and lectures and dances. You're used to shopping in all those beautiful stores you have in Lexington. I'm afraid we have just a handful of dry-goods stores and mail comes only once a week. About eight hundred and fifty people live here. And our streets turn to mud with the first rain."

"Believe me, John, I couldn't be happier than I am right now," I told him.

Then he pointed it out, up ahead on a hill, my sister and brother-in-law's house, a two-story brick affair with a veranda all around it. On the front steps stood my brother-in-law, Ninian Edwards, ready to greet us.

Elizabeth had had a child just one month before. She was still resting.
Well, I can be of help,
I thought, as I climbed down out of the stagecoach.
They won't be sorry they invited me here.

M
Y SISTER'S NORTH PARLOR
was forty feet long, big enough for all the meetings, teas, and balls they held in it. Since Springfield had become the state capital, it had had an influx of lawyers, and no meeting or gathering took place that didn't happen here. The room was simple yet elegant, with rosewood and mahogany furniture, ornately carved tables, and silver bowls and coffee set inherited from Ninian's father. The Edwardses employed four free negroes at the going wage.

Just as I removed my bonnet and found my way into Elizabeth's arms I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, Ninian lighting a tapered candle in the front window.

No other candles in the room were yet lighted. Ninian smiled at me. "It's a custom we have here, Mary," he said. "We light a candle in the front window to signal the young men of Springfield that there is an eligible young woman at home."

"How many young men?" I asked fearfully.

"Oh, a number of homeless lawyers," my sister Frances said, coming into the room and hugging me. "They've done it to me. Don't worry, Mary. You can abide it. For instance, cousin John's partner, Abraham Lincoln. He calls himself humble Abraham. You'll find him easy to talk to, Mary."

M
ARY TODD
met Abraham Lincoln in 1839 in Springfield, Illinois, on her second visit to her sister's. They had a tumultuous courtship with several partings and comings together. Lincoln was shy and awkward, given to moods and depression. But he was a lawyer, a self-educated man who came from pioneer stock and had arrived in Springfield in 1837.

He was completely unschooled in the art of "parlor talk," which included talking to women. Born into a poor farming family, he had only one year of formal schooling. He had worked on a flatboat, as a store clerk, and as a postmaster. He read constantly and could speak fluently by the time he got to Springfield, but he had to borrow money for a suit to attend the legislature.

Yet Mary Todd saw something in this earnest, ambitious, and melancholy man. Of course by the time she met him he had already been elected as town trustee, chosen as a presidential elector at the first state Whig (Republican) convention, and was one of the managers of a cotillion ball at the American House.

After their chaotic courtship, during which Abraham Lincoln almost had a nervous breakdown, they were married in the house of Mary's sister and brother-in-law, the Edwardses.

It was November 1842. Mary wore her sister Elizabeth's white satin wedding dress, which had been Mama's, and a pearl necklace. There were two bridesmaids. An Episcopalian minister married them.

A
BRAHAM CALLED HER
"Molly" and Mary called him "Mr. Lincoln." They took up residence in the Globe Tavern, a hotel/boardinghouse on Adams Street in Springfield. Room and board cost them $4 a week.

Lincoln was away a lot, riding court circuit (going from county to county to different courts, to try cases). Mary, in time, became pregnant with their first child, who was born on August 1, 1843. They named him Robert Todd after Mary's father.

Her father was so happy that he paid them a visit and gave them $25 in gold and also gave Lincoln a law case that would earn him $50. This money enabled them to start looking for a home.

They found one at Eighth and Jackson streets and settled in. Mary had the help of a black woman named Epsy Smith, who worked for her sister and brother-in-law.

Their second son, Edward, was born in March 1846. In the meantime Mary went on, firmly believing that her husband would surely bring her fame and power.

It was when Lincoln was riding circuit and away from home for weeks at a time that Mary consoled herself with shopping, just as her father used to console her with gifts when things got bad at home.

After working for years for the Whig party, in the fall of 1846 Lincoln was elected to Congress. They moved to Washington, D.C., where they lived in a boardinghouse. But first they paid a visit to Mary's family in Lexington, Kentucky. Here Lincoln saw slavery firsthand, being that Mary's father's house was right up the street from the slave market.

"I bite my lip and keep quiet," he said. He was anti-slavery.

Lincoln spent two years in Congress. Mary and their two sons returned to Springfield before the two years were up, unable to bear life in a boardinghouse, and Lincoln returned in 1849 when his term was up.

In late July, Mary's father died of cholera; six months later Grandma Parker passed away. In December Eddie fell ill. The Lincolns watched their son suffer with a wracking cough and fevers for nearly two months. Eddie died on February 1, 1850. The Lincolns were devastated. Mary couldn't stop crying, could not eat, and wrote a poem about him that was published in the
Springfield Journal.

But soon she was expecting another child and this, at least, helped her to stop crying. William (called Willie) was born on December 21, 1850.

Two years later they had Thomas, named after Lincoln's father (called Tad, short for Tadpole).

Lincoln once again was practicing law in Springfield with the firm of Lincoln and Herndon. Most of his cases were for the railroads, which were advancing and expanding all over the land. Mary spent her time cooking and caring for the children, shopping and sewing and "educating" her husband in such things as wearing a jacket when answering the doorbell and which silverware to use at a dinner party. She kept his spirits buoyed and was a constant supporter in his career, besides being an excellent mother. Both were indulgent parents. Always interested in politics, Mary was soon collaborating with and advising her husband, and there were many people who said Lincoln told them his wife expected him to be president.

Zachary Taylor, a Whig, was in the White House. Lincoln wanted to be rewarded for all the work he'd done for the party. He wanted the post of commissioner of the Land Office. So he went back to Washington to further his cause, and Mary started a letter-writing campaign in his favor to get President Zachary Taylor's attention.

Lincoln didn't get the post but was offered the governorship of Oregon Territory. He declined. They didn't want to live so far away from everything. So for six years his political career came to a standstill. Mary, busy with the children, still continued to bolster his spirits and still spoke of his being president someday.

Lincoln made some speeches (after reading them first to Mary), and in 1858 he entered into a series of debates (seven in seven prairie towns) with Senator Stephen Douglas, Mary's old beau, taking a moderate antislavery position.

Sometimes he spoke as a candidate for the state senate himself, sometimes he spoke for others, but the slavery question was coming to a head and Lincoln knew he had to take a firm position on it. In the late 1850s Lincoln took his stand on slavery, saying in one of his speeches that it was a monstrous injustice.