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: âIt 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.â1
The historiography of Mary Lincoln is similar to her personalityâsome 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, Maryâs legacy has become focused on her institutionalization to a sanitarium in 1875 and whether or not she was âcrazy,â not just during that year, but throughout her life. As part of her insanity, history typically recounts Maryâs penchantâeven maniaâfor 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 Maryâs 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 Maryâs primary fame.
It is oddly fitting, then, that the most recent poems published about Maryâand the concluding pieces in this bookâdeal with all three of these qualities. In his âMary Lincoln Triptych,â 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. âI 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,â Smith explained. âBeyond 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.â2
The first of Smithâs three poems, âGloves,â examines Mary Lincolnâs dual nature of being stingy and parsimonious while simultaneously spending lavishly on her own wardrobe and on White House decorating. The poem âSummoning Shadesâ delves into Maryâs 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 Smithâs final poem, âA Serpentâs Tooth,â he deals with what he believes was an âopen hostilityâ 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, Maryâs voice in the poem is looking back one year later about the âtorture and insultâ of Bellevue Place. Smith has described his triptych as âthree monologuesâ that he hopes âwill allow a credible version of [Maryâs] voice to be heard today.â
Smithâs âMary Lincoln Triptychâ was published in the Winter 2012 issue of The Missouri Review, and received the 2013 Gerald T. Perkoff Literary Prize in Poetry.
(Editorâs 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. âŠ
Spendthrift, you say? No, but also yes.
Entre nous: Finesse is everything, and if
I cover my fingers with precious fabricâcalf
leather or velvet, silk of shantung
or charmeuseâmy 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 bereavementâs cup
and wept myself dry, the sprigs of funeral myrtle
are now forbidden. So I must uncocoon
and hide the martyrâs face from my surviving boys.
Let Victoria remain the priestess of misery3;
I will display a survivorâs 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 senatorsâ
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 fansâthe 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 âKitchen Cabinet,â 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...