Lincoln's Lover

Mary Lincoln in Poetry

Jason Emerson

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781631012921
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In his Poetics, Aristotle said a historian and a poet do not differ from each other-one simply writes in verse and the other in prose. In fact, history and poetry have a long connection; much of what we know about ancient history throughout the world came to us through the centuries and millennia as epic poetry purporting to tell the stories of great men and events. The two genres also create a fascinating juxtaposition when each views one through the lens of the other. To consider the life of a historical person through poetry is both to see that person for who they were and to consider who that person could have, or even should have, been in a more poetically perfect world.

Abraham Lincoln and poetry have a long and intimate connection. Lincoln wrote and even published multiple poems, and all of his greatest writings and speeches are themselves outstandingly and inherently poetic. Following Lincoln's death, hundreds of poetic tributes were published in newspapers across the country, and eulogies to the Great Emancipator in verse have continued to be penned ever since. But what about his wife, Mary? She also has a long and intimate connection to verse: she read and wrote poetry, was both ennobled muse and satirical target, and shared a love of the genre that formed a personal connection with her husband.

Lincoln's Lover: Mary Lincoln in Poetry is a compilation of poetry written by, for, and about Mary Lincoln dating from 1839 to 2012. Each poem is prefaced with brief explanations contextualizing the historical events of Mary's life as portrayed in the poem, as well as an explanation of the poem and the poet who wrote it. Presented chronologically, the works offer a view of the changing perceptions of Mary Lincoln through the years. The poems show Mary as woman, wife, First Lady, and widow, as well as insane woman, complex individual, and intricate and indispensable part of her husband. A combination of poetry, history, and biography, Lincoln's Lover is a unique book that allows readers to experience Mary Lincoln's words, thoughts, experiences, and legacy as explained and exposed through poetry over the past 170 years.

2012

Mary Lincoln was a complex person who had numerous positive and enviable qualities and, unfortunately, many unaccountable, unenviable, and downright negative ones. She was a faithful wife, an adoring mother, and, at times, a loving friend; she tried to be an admirable first lady, and she often visited military camps and hospitals to give assistance and attention to wounded soldiers. But, as the historical record shows, Mary was also selfish, greedy, narcissistic, self-pitying, and at times downright cruel. This duality of personality perhaps was best expressed in a memoir by presidential secretary William O. Stoddard, whose main job was to deal with Mrs. Lincoln. He wrote: “It was not easy, at first, to understand why a lady who could be one day so kindly, so considerate, so generous, so thoughtful and so hopeful, could, upon another day, appear so unreasonable, so irritable, so despondent, so even niggardly, and so prone to see the dark, the wrong side of men and women and events.”¹

The historiography of Mary Lincoln is similar to her personality—some books and writers hold her up as a flawless feminist icon, while others decry her as a heartless termagant who made the lives of everyone around her insufferable. Whether fair or not, Mary’s legacy has become focused on her institutionalization to a sanitarium in 1875 and whether or not she was “crazy,” not just during that year, but throughout her life. As part of her insanity, history typically recounts Mary’s penchant—even mania—for shopping, as well as her belief in spiritualism, or communicating with the spirits of her dead loved ones. Most writers tend to use these aspects of Mary’s personality as a starting point to either defend her as an abused woman, the victim of a misogynist society (and misogynist historical community), or to declare her insanity as further proof of her reprehensible character.

No matter how these character traits are viewed, they have generally become Mary’s primary fame.

It is oddly fitting, then, that the most recent poems published about Mary—and the concluding pieces in this book—deal with all three of these qualities. In his “Mary Lincoln Triptych,” poet R. T. Smith said he was moved to write his trilogy of poems after reading a number of books about Mary Lincoln and finding himself captivated by her. “I discovered scores of fascinating things about Mary Todd Lincoln, but the ones that struck the most resonant chord involved her obsessive shopping, her immersion in spiritualism and her arrest on charges of insanity,” Smith explained. “Beyond the numerous personal losses she experienced, I imagine Mrs. Lincoln kept a kind of national casualty count in her heart, but she tried to insulate herself from all that grief with the gloves and other purchases, while she also mourned dramatically and attempted to summon the dead, which was very much the fashion of the day. She was also far more sophisticated, erudite and sympathetic than I had guessed, and by the time I was a few pages into note taking, I was captivated and wanted to find a voice that would do her justice.”²

The first of Smith’s three poems, “Gloves,” examines Mary Lincoln’s dual nature of being stingy and parsimonious while simultaneously spending lavishly on her own wardrobe and on White House decorating. The poem “Summoning Shades” delves into Mary’s profound personal grief due to the deaths of her husband and three of her four children; it also explores her belief in spiritualism as an anodyne to ease her suffering and broken heart. In Smith’s final poem, “A Serpent’s Tooth,” he deals with what he believes was an “open hostility” between Mary and her oldest son Robert, the son who had her put on trial for insanity and committed to a sanitarium in 1875. Specifically, Mary’s voice in the poem is looking back one year later about the “torture and insult” of Bellevue Place. Smith has described his triptych as “three monologues” that he hopes “will allow a credible version of [Mary’s] voice to be heard today.”

Smith’s “Mary Lincoln Triptych” was published in the Winter 2012 issue of The Missouri Review, and received the 2013 Gerald T. Perkoff Literary Prize in Poetry.

(Editor’s note: the length of this triptych, combined with the number of historical allusions in the poem, made it desirable to include clarifying endnotes within the piece.)

Gloves

October 1862

Thrift, thrift Horatio. …

Spendthrift, you say? No, but also yes.

Entre nous: Finesse is everything, and if

I cover my fingers with precious fabric—calf

leather or velvet, silk of shantung

or charmeuse—my fine hands will dance,

despite all the jet and ebony of my mourning.

Sackcloth and ashes will not bring sweet Willie back,

and since I have drained bereavement’s cup

and wept myself dry, the sprigs of funeral myrtle

are now forbidden. So I must uncocoon

and hide the martyr’s face from my surviving boys.

Let Victoria remain the priestess of misery³;

I will display a survivor’s poise,

keep Tad and Robert by my side

as I visit afflicted soldiers from the killing fields.

But every spending spree, mind you, is designed

to distract from migraines like thunderstorms

within me.⁴ Less mania than calculation,

my millinery outings with retinue and etiquette

preserve me, and I have my advocates:

Poor sons too good to dwell on this unworthy earth,

Eddie and Willie both in séance somberly

entreat: Mother do not neglect

elegance, which amplifies both your elevated station

and grief itself. Lizzie Keckley (who knows

the White House staff call me Hellcat

for my tantrums, which are not excessive)

says this: custom gloves are the luxuries the senators’

ladies will likely eye with most envy,

ribboned gloves, those open at the wrist with pearl buttons,

dove-colored, chantilly, seamed, hush-blue, those suited

for the opera or riding, mittens for frost, every cut and cloth,

gloves … and fans—the Italian, the Japanese laced

with figures like fantastic shadows and spreading

wing-like with one flick of my wrist. Because Father

shares his many secrets and seeks advice,

calls me his “Kitchen Cabinet,” they hate me,

all the pullets in their leg-o-mutton sleeves

and empire waists. I am woven like a silken thread

in jacquard through this war,

and they but bystanders, jackals under their bonnet

brims, such halos of the ordinary I have to laugh.

Sometimes in the Green Room I see W...