Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (7 page)

For days she sewed and sewed, rising early and working late, barely pausing for meals and church and a newly arrived letter from George. She completed the last stitches early on Tuesday evening, just in time to fold it carefully with Mrs. Grimsley’s completed blue silk waist and hurry the one-third of a mile to the White House. Peter Brown greeted her in the vestibule, but she knew the way well enough by then that he let her hasten upstairs on her own.

There she found Mrs. Lincoln in her dressing gown, in a terrible state of excitement despite her companions’ attempts to soothe her. “I cannot go down,” Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed, tearing herself from a cousin’s embrace. “How could I possibly? I have absolutely nothing to wear. Imagine what people will say. Think of how they’ll mock me.”

“No one will mock you,” said Mrs. Edwards, Mrs. Lincoln’s patient elder sister, clad in a subdued gown of brown brocade.

“Wear the gray velvet,” said Mrs. Grimsley, who wore a blue watered silk gown with a long train adorned with turquoises and pearls, and a headdress of white roses. “It’s lovely and no one here has seen it yet.”

Just then, the youngest of the ladies spotted Elizabeth lingering uncertainly in the doorway. “She’s here,” she cried out, gesturing, and everyone turned Elizabeth’s way.

“There, now,” said Mrs. Edwards, visibly relieved. “Didn’t we tell you she would come?”

Her lips pressed together tightly, Mrs. Lincoln strode two paces toward Elizabeth before stopping short. “Mrs. Keckley, you have disappointed me—deceived me.” Her face was pale with outrage, her eyes red rimmed. “Why do you bring my dress at this late hour?”

Elizabeth took a deep breath and carefully unfolded the gown, Mrs. Grimsley’s smaller garment still draped over her arm. “Because I have just finished it, and I thought I should be in time.”

“But you are not in time, Mrs. Keckley.” Mrs. Lincoln shook her head, wrung her hands, and began pacing. “You have bitterly disappointed me. I have no time now to dress, and, what is more, I will
not
dress, and go downstairs.”

Her ladies protested and reached out to her, but she brushed them off.

“I am sorry if I have disappointed you, Mrs. Lincoln, for I intended to be in time.” Humiliated, Elizabeth took care to keep her voice calm, even, and firm. She saw no reason for such distress. She had plenty of time to get Mrs. Lincoln ready for the levee if the good woman would only consent to it. “Will you let me dress you? I can have you ready in a few minutes.”

“No, I won’t be dressed.” Mrs. Lincoln halted, threw one glance at the window, another at the door, and flung her hands into the air, helpless. “I will stay in my room. Mr. Lincoln can go down with the other ladies.”

“But there is plenty of time for you to dress, Mary,” said Mrs. Grimsley.

“Let Mrs. Keckley assist you,” implored Mrs. Edwards, “and she will soon have you ready.”

Uncertain, Mary looked from her sister to her cousin and back. “Oh, very well,” she said, subdued. “She may try.”

Quickly Elizabeth helped Mrs. Lincoln out of her dressing gown and into the moiré antique before she could change her mind. She arranged Mrs. Lincoln’s dark hair with red roses that complemented the hue of her gown. The dress was very becoming, and when Mrs. Lincoln examined herself in the mirror it was as if a freshening breeze blew away
the storm clouds of only moments before, for she was all sunshine and smiles, very pleased with her appearance. She did indeed look very elegant in the rose moiré antique, accented beautifully by her pearl necklace, earrings, and bracelets.

A knock sounded on the door, and President Lincoln himself came in, with young Tad and Willie trailing after him. He greeted the ladies with smiles and compliments, and then threw himself on the sofa without any apparent fear of wrinkling his evening attire. His sons were immediately upon him, wrestling and laughing, and he made a great show of bravely fending them off, joking all the while. Amused, Elizabeth suppressed a smile. She never could have imagined the leader of the land roughhousing with his boys like any fond father.

Before long, Mrs. Lincoln said pointedly, “Perhaps the boys have had enough of that for now.”

“No, Mother,” said Willie. “We’re not at all tired.”

Mr. Lincoln laughed. “Maybe not, but your father is.” He swung his long legs around and rose from the sofa as the boys darted off to play. Pulling on his gloves, he quoted a few lines from a poem about a barefoot boy’s carefree play, and then another about a blacksmith whose hard work earned him a night’s repose.

The other ladies were charmed, but his wife seemed barely able to contain her impatience. “You seem to be in a poetical mood tonight.”

“Yes, Mother, these are poetical times.” His smile deepened as he looked her over. “I declare, you look charming in that dress. Mrs. Keckley has met with great success.” As he offered compliments to the other ladies—Mrs. Grimsley in the blue watered silk, Mrs. Edwards in an understated gown of brown and black, Miss Edwards in crimson, Mrs. Baker in ashes of rose, and Mrs. Kellogg in lemon-colored silk—Elizabeth flushed with pleasure and pride. The president himself had praised her handiwork and referred to her by name, although until that moment she had not realized that he even knew it.

“Shall we go downstairs, Mother?” the president asked his wife.

“In a moment,” she said, frowning as she searched her dressing table. “I cannot find my lace handkerchief.”

Everyone swore that they had seen it on the table only moments before, but no one had any idea what had become of it. Elizabeth joined in the search with the others, but after a few minutes, Mr. Lincoln’s laughter boomed again, and he raked a long-fingered hand through his hair and sent an aide after Tad and Willie. When the boys were brought back to face their parents—Willie, somber and good; Tad, bursting with mischievous smiles—it was easy enough to deduce what had become of the handkerchief. Eventually the playful thief was persuaded to relinquish his prize and the handkerchief was restored to its rightful owner. Only then did Mrs. Lincoln smile, take her husband’s arm, and lead the other ladies downstairs to the levee, as elegant and regal as any queen.

For a long moment, Elizabeth stood watching after them, a bit confounded, marveling at all that she had seen. “George will never believe this,” she murmured as she drew on her shawl and collected her satchel. Yet she had observed the scene with her own eyes.

That night, Elizabeth would later hear, a gracious and cordial President Lincoln had shaken hands with hundreds of well-wishers for more than two hours, welcoming strangers as warmly as friends and greeting many by name. Some of Elizabeth’s longtime patrons had attended the event, but most Southern ladies of the established Washington social elite had stayed away, a calculated snub that could not have escaped the First Lady’s notice. Those who did attend mingled freely, Northerners and Southerners alike, but their disagreements were surely never far from their thoughts, what with militias forming in their home states and Major Anderson’s men languishing at Fort Sumter. While all eyes were fixed on the Lincolns—measuring, appraising—mischief had broken out in the unwatched cloakroom; when the guests departed, they discovered that their coats and wraps had been haphazardly mixed up and some had been stolen, inspiring one wag to remark that only one in ten guests left the gala clad in the same outer garments he had worn upon his arrival.

Mrs. Lincoln herself was well pleased with her first levee, having perhaps forgotten her distress and anger in the hours preceding it. She was less sanguine on the morning after the president’s first state dinner
held for members of his cabinet a few weeks later. Elizabeth had dressed her in a striking blue silk gown, beautifully embroidered, and had watched her take her husband’s arm happily and descend the grand staircase as if she expected to have a perfectly lovely time. The next day, however, when Elizabeth returned to the White House to sew and to present various ribbons for Mrs. Lincoln to consider for a new bonnet, she found her patron in a state of bewildered distress. The previous night, as the dinner guests were leaving, the secretary of the treasury’s daughter, the twenty-year-old, auburn-haired beauty Miss Kate Chase, had slighted Mrs. Lincoln in front of all their guests.

“Including men from the papers,” lamented Mrs. Lincoln. “Soon everyone will hear of it.”

Elizabeth decided it would be kinder not to warn her that gossip would spread the tale swiftly enough without help from the press, if something deliciously shocking had indeed happened. Miss Chase was one of the most popular young ladies in Washington society, praised for her charm and wit as well as her beauty, and if she had affronted the First Lady, it would be quite a story. “What did she do?”

“Well…” Mrs. Lincoln hesitated. “It sounds silly when I describe it.”

“Then perhaps it’s really nothing after all.”

“Oh, no, no, it’s something.” Mrs. Lincoln picked up a spool of ribbon, turned it over in her hands, and set it aside without really seeming to examine it. “I was bidding my guests good-bye, and when it came to be Miss Chase’s turn, I said, ‘I shall be glad to see you anytime, Miss Chase.’ She replied, in a thoroughly lofty tone, ‘Mrs. Lincoln, I shall be glad to have
you
call on
me
at anytime.’ See how she puts herself above me? I will have to go to her. She does not intend to visit me.”

Elizabeth frowned. Miss Chase’s remark did possess a certain air of disrespect, but her reputation was that of a perfectly lovely and admirable, if ambitious, young woman. “That was not kind of her.”

“Not kind? It was more than that. It was impertinent and unbecoming a young lady.” Mrs. Lincoln rose and went to the window, looking out over the Potomac to the green hills of Virginia on the other side. “I suppose I should expect nothing better from the daughter of
Secretary Chase. You know she and her father expected the Republican Party to nominate him instead of my husband.”

“I did not know.”

Mrs. Lincoln turned away from the window, nodding. “It’s true, and since her mother is dead, if her father had been elected president, Miss Chase would have been his hostess. She believes that their rightful place is here in the White House, and that she should be First Lady now, not I.”

“Well,” said Elizabeth mildly, “he wasn’t, and she isn’t.”

After a moment, Mrs. Lincoln laughed. “Yes, that’s right. Still, I’m certain it remains her greatest ambition.”

From that day forward, Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Chase were social rivals, each considering herself the highest lady in Washington society and resenting the other’s attempts to demonstrate her superior rank. Miss Chase had the advantage of beauty, popularity, charm, and long-standing ties to the established elites, but Mrs. Lincoln had the president, the White House, and the title of First Lady. And, Elizabeth liked to flatter herself, Mrs. Lincoln had the advantage of a particularly skilled dressmaker who would make sure she always went out in public—or into battle, as it sometimes seemed—perfectly turned out.

For Elizabeth had become Mrs. Lincoln’s regular modiste, and throughout the spring of 1861, she would sew more than fifteen gowns for the First Lady. She also often dressed Mrs. Lincoln in her finery and arranged her hair for balls, dinners, and levees. One evening, as the president observed how skillfully Elizabeth tended to his wife, he asked her if she were brave enough to attempt to subdue his own unruly locks.

“If you didn’t make such a habit of running your hands through your hair, it wouldn’t be such a tangle,” Mrs. Lincoln admonished him.

The president merely smiled and sat down in his easy chair. “Well, Madam Elizabeth,” he asked, “will you brush my bristles down tonight?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” she replied, taking his comb and brush in hand. When she finished, he examined himself in the mirror and declared that his hair looked as if it had been taught a lesson. He was so pleased that it became his custom to ask Elizabeth to attend to his hair
after she finished dressing his wife, and Elizabeth did what she could with it.

As the weeks went by, Elizabeth took on other duties within the White House, such as running errands for Mrs. Lincoln and tending to Willie and Tad when they fell ill with the usual mild childhood ailments, but modiste to the First Lady remained her most prominent role. Over time she would learn that Mrs. Lincoln preferred to wear white but that she was also fond of pink, crimson, bright yellow, deep purple, and royal blue. She loved to wear pearls against her skin and flowers in her hair, and she favored low, open necklines with short sleeves to show off her well-formed neck and shoulders, ignoring whispered criticism that such styles were more appropriate for younger women.

Elizabeth soon learned that scathing criticism of her newest and most important patron would be unrelenting, coming from all corners in copious amounts, much to the dismay and consternation of its unhappy subject, who could do nothing to staunch the flood.

On the morning of April 12, Washington was jolted awake by shocking and often contradictory reports from Charleston. Before sunrise that day, Confederate cannon had fired upon Fort Sumter. No, indeed—both parties were still engaged in serious negotiations. No, that was but wishful thinking—shots had been fired. No one knew what to believe. A furious battle was ongoing, or Major Anderson had surrendered. The fort was destroyed utterly and its defenders slaughtered, or the starving, exhausted Union troops had marched out under a flag of truce and were being held prisoner. The citizens of Washington crowded telegraph offices and hotels, demanding news and spreading rumors, but no one knew precisely what was happening, what might have already happened. Secessionists who had kept their opinions to themselves since Mr. Lincoln’s administration took over the capital now cheered the start of war. Southern sympathizers openly sought recruits for the Confederate army, while loyal Union men rushed to join militias. In the streets, arguments turned into fistfights, and then the most alarming rumor of
all swept through the city: Rebels were marching on Washington with an army twenty thousand strong.