Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (43 page)

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 anniversary 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.”

Elizabeth had little choice but to do exactly that. The town, New Market, was in a sad, dilapidated condition that spoke plainly of the heartless destruction of war. Climbing down from the stage and collecting her satchel, she found her way into a hotel, really little more than a house, where she was able to buy a cup of coffee and gather her wits. When she inquired about a ride back to Rude’s Hill, the landlord told her that the stage would return that evening.

“This evening?” Elizabeth’s spirits plummeted. It was only just dawn. “I want to go as soon as possible. I should die if I had to stay all day in this lonely place.”

She didn’t mean to insult the residents of the tiny hamlet, but fortunately few of them were present to hear. The landlord shrugged and said there was nothing he could do, so she settled down for a long wait, utterly dejected.

She had not sat there long, sipping her cooling coffee, when the colored man behind the bar came over to her table. “I’m sorry for your troubles, ma’am.”

She managed a tremulous smile. “That is very kind of you.”

“I know Gen’ral Meem’s place. I can drive you over in ’bout an hour.”

Elizabeth seized her chance. “Oh, could you? That would be the most joyful news I’ve heard in days.”

He assured her it would be his pleasure, and in turn she thanked him and urged him to set out as soon as possible.

She finished her coffee and waited outside the door of the hotel for
her courteous driver to bring his wagon around. While she stood there, fighting to conceal her impatience, a fat old lady spied her from across the street and waddled over to greet her. “Ain’t you Elizabeth?”